Dennis the Menace and God's Grace

It's Sunday night and another week has come to an end. It's been a good week. And I have no reason to believe the coming week will be any different. Day after day I receive blessings too numerous to count and blessings I know I certainly don't deserve. I wonder, am I just lucky or is there some other principle at work in my life?

Remember Dennis the Menace? Dennis and his little friend, Joey, are leaving Mrs. Wilson’s house with their hands full of cookies. As you may remember, Dennis is not always very considerate toward the Wilsons who are his next-door neighbors (especially Mr. Wilson).
But Joey says, "I wonder what we did to deserve this?"
Dennis answers, "Look, Joey, Mrs. Wilson gives us cookies not because we’re nice, but because she’s nice."

Theologians speak of something called common grace - God's goodness to humanity because he is good. Through common grace we receive blessings (cookies), not because of who we are or what we have done, but because God is good and he loves us. In other words, I'm not lucky, I am blessed by the principle of common grace.

How should we respond to common grace? How should we respond to the blessings God so freely gives? How about we start by being thankful? If Mrs.Wilson gave me some fresh baked cookies I hope I would say thank you. It seems when God gives us blessings we should do the same thing.

Here's a simple idea. Start each morning by thanking God for the blessings you're going to receive. And then at night take some time to say thank you for the blessings you did receive.

"Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise;
give thanks to him and praise his name." (Psalm 100:4)