I am thankful that God chose for us to be born here in this wonderful country, “where even the poor people are fat,” as a Russian in this article pointed out. The best way we can show our gratitude is to keep God’s commandments and pray for the leaders of this blessed land. Let’s do it!
Pastor John
http://www.dineshdsouza.com/archives/articles/10_great_things_usa/
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Hey
As a foreigner, though not coming from a place like India, I can well agree with this man. Back in Australia in the 80s and 90s I had a Slovakian (as it became) couple as friends. They escaped communist Czechoslovakia twice (that is another story). They used to repeat a Slovak saying, “When the fat get thin, the thin are dead!” In 1995 they came to visit me in Brisbane and they brought a sister of one of them (I forget whose) who was by then able to visit Australia. One day we took them to this big, new supermarket that had opened nearby. This place made quite a show of presenting the wide range produce for sale and the prices were great. A couple of days later we wanted to go back but the relative didn’t want to go there again. What she had seen the first time was so far beyond what she had ever experienced that she just could not take it. It exposed the lie she had lived under for almost her entire life. The bounty and the common-place nature of having so much available, with no restrictions, was too much for her. She could not go back there! And she was actually trying not to believe what she was seeing. It was so sad. I could never have imagined such a thing.
God’s people might have a similar reaction if they ever see what could be theirs in Christ. They have lived under oppression for so long that freedom is barely imaginable and perhaps too frightening.
But my friends escaped – people can want to do that.
I knew another man who floated out of Poland to Germany.
And others who made it across the border into Italy thanks to terrible weather which disinclined guards from their duties. And they were all very happy to be in Australia. They knew what it could be like.
Damien
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This was an interesting article. It’s good to see thankfulness and appreciation in someone towards this country. My grandfather, a Lebanese, came to America through Ellis Island, and started a new life here. I often wondered what it would have been like if I was born in Lebanon. My grandfather told me that Lebanon was once the destination of peoples around the world to take their vacation there; it was one of the most beautiful places in the world, and that you could hitch-hike anywhere and not worry about your safety, or, just camp beside the highway or road. Now, it is a place of unrest and civil wars; we are truly blessed.
I wondered if I would have been caught up in some war or conflict, or be persecuted in some way because of who I was. No, because God already knew who I was (before I was born) and he wanted my grandfather to come to America so that I could be born, so that I could receive that precious gift from His son Jesus, and become the person He wanted me to be; my life is God’s.
One day a speck of dust floated in the air in my music room and was highlighted by the light bulb right in front of my face. I started crying and prayed, “Lord, that is what I was made from — anything good in me more than that (dust particle) is what you created in me; I am nothing without you.” If I take any credit at all for what God has done in me, it is nothing but pride. I saw another speck of dust the same way floating in front of my face at your house on a Wednesday night meeting when I was there, and I had the very same feelings: “Jesus, that is all I am without you.”
I am thankful for the decisions and the hardships my grandfather must have faced to enter this country. They must have been massive compared to what I go through on any given day. I am thankful for the life I have here so that I can praise God with all my heart, mind, soul, and strength without being yanked out of my house (at least at this time) and be thrown into jail, or my home confiscated. My house is heated and cooled, my pantry is full, and I’m surrounded by the most precious people on this planet; I am a truly blessed man.
Thank you, Jesus for wanting me.
Billy