I’ll give you a for-instance.  We pulled off I-81 at Morristown, Tennessee, Sunday, to eat lunch at Cracker Barrel.  I knew it was Mother’s Day, but I thought since we had waited till well after 1pm to eat, the crowd would be down a bit.  I was wrong.  They were lined up to the end of the porch just to get in.  So we went across the street to Hardee’s.    The teen-aged girl behind the counter immediately seemed irritated we were there.  My future son-in-law ordered a Chili-Dog (what did I care, he was in the other car), and asked the girl: “What comes on that?”  She got really nasty and said “I don’t know.  How should I Know?” This was startling to me.  I’m used to such treatment, but this is not the way teen-aged girls react to my future son-in-law – they giggle, they swoon, they follow him around like little baby ducklings – they do not take that tone.  “Well, I don’t want it then,” he replied. “You don’t want it! You don’t want it !!” she demanded. “No, If you don’t know what comes on your Chili Dog, I don’t know what comes on it,” he said politely, and ordered something else. When she brought our food out, 35 minutes later (not an exaggeration) she slammed the tray on the table, crossed her arms, did that head-thing girls in a pique do, and stared at us until we took our order off her tray.  Well, anyway that was pretty much typical of our experience of southern hospitality all across the vast, east-west expanse of the Volunteer state.

            Trollope once wrote that it was not the tragedies of life that defeat us, but life’s irritations.  This has been my experience in the past, and was about to be again at 2:15 pm, last Sunday in Morristown, Tennessee.  We were surrounded by older couples, similarly treated, who were feverishly scrawling on the suggestion cards available at the counter.  I could have easily organized an insurrection (I did remind them all to mail their cards directly to headquarters – anything put in the suggestion box could be thrown away).  But then I remembered.

            My daughter just graduated from college (in 4 years).  She had just, that weekend, gotten engaged to a Christian young man we admire.  My wife and children are all healthy and well. We are members of the best family of believers we know.  My three children have all been baptized.  We have a home and jobs.  What right do I have to be angry about anything?

            Two Sundays ago I gave a lesson on the two great commands (Matthew 22.34-40, Mark 12.28-34, Luke 10.25-28).  I believe that there are two great sins as well, or at least two basic sins that, if they don’t exceed all others, at least precede them.

            In Romans 1, Paul is making the case that even though the Gentiles were not given a Law from God, as the Jews had been, they were still accountable for their sin, because creation teaches us some basic things – that God is, and that we should be thankful (Romans 1.18-21).  We are, all of us, obligated to recognize God’s existence, and give Him thanks.

            How easily we become guilty of that second great sin – forgetting to be thankful.  And to what devastating ends….If any of us made a list of the last five bad things we have done, I am convinced that each would have been avoided by remembering to be thankful.

            And so let us remember.  God is good.  Every good thing we have, we have from Him (James 1.17).  We are undeserving of the least of the “good” things we have been given.  These are the essential facts of human existence.  To forget them is to forget how to act like Christians.  To forget them is to forget how to act like humans.