More than 25 years earlier, the missions committee at my home church decided to pay a significant part of
my tuition at a Christian college. After spending my late teens making bad choices, I recommitted my life to
God.

Feeling compelled to formally study the Bible, I enrolled in a Christian college. When some people in the
congregation said they wanted to help me financially, I felt entirely unworthy. Frankly though, I don’t know if
I would have stayed with my studies without their financial help.

My letter started out saying, “Friends, I wanted you to know that I have now completed 20 years of campus
ministry at the University of Illinois. Who would ever have thought that a simple kid from a working family in
northwest Kansas would have had the opportunity to be a campus minister on one of the great university
campuses in the country? It has been a terrific honor to be part of God’s work here in Champaign-Urbana. I
write to acknowledge my deep debt of gratitude to you good people for your prayers and financial assistance
when I was a struggling, confused ministry student.”

Whatever God calls you to do in life, one dimension of that calling is a reminder for his followers that nothing
in life should ever be taken for granted. Everything in life must be received with gratitude.

Writer Os Guinness says it this way. “What does it mean to repay in life? For our heritage? Our schooling?
Our language? Our Freedom? Our physique? Our looks? Our health? Our life? At that point a deep divide
opens up. By its very character the modern world answers: You owe nothing. But its very character, the
Christian gospel answers: You owe everything.”

Last month I watched the incoming freshman at the University of Illinois go through orientation. The new
students came to campus with their parents to spend two days getting oriented for the fall semester. One day
I saw a young woman entangled in a heated argument with her mother. At one point the girl blurted out,
“Mom, I don’t need you to figure out my classes. I got here on my own, and I know what I’m doing.”

Her comments reminded me of cartoon character Bart Simpson’s supper time prayer: “Dear God, we pay
for all this ourselves. So thanks for nothing.”

Writing the letter to the people in my home congregation, I thought of Paul’s question to the church in
Corinth. “What do you have that you did not receive?” (I Corinthians 4:7) For me there was only one honest
answer: Nothing. Guinness writes, “…for everything of God and good in our lives without a single exception
is all of grace.”

Without question, I am a recipient of the kindness of many people – my parents, my home congregation, my
friends and especially my wife of 25 years. With so much grace shown to me, should I not be a giver of grace
to others? Surely my first and constant response to God must be utter and overwhelming gratitude. G.K.
Chesterton said “the chief idea of my life” is the practice of “taking things with gratitude and not taking things
for granted.”

By and large, the culture says we are entirely independent and truly autonomous. Not so in Christianity.  The
followers of Jesus can know with certainty where they stand on this point – utterly amazed and completely
humbled ever to have been chosen and called at all. None of us has anything at all that we did not receive
from the merciful hand of God.

So think about it for a minute. Is there someone you need to thank? Your father, your mother, a grandparent,
a spouse, a friend, a former teacher, a coach?  How about writing a handwritten letter like I did? People
really will appreciate knowing that you are thankful.  Your letter will be a cool drink on a hot day.

This prayer by 17th-century Anglican poet George Herbert will give your letter the proper focus: “You have
given so much to me. Give me one thing more – a grateful heart.”
 
 

Don Follis is an Urbana pastor and member of Vineyard Christian Fellowship in Urbana, Ill.  His column
appears on Fridays.  Copyright © 2003 by the Champaign-Urbana News-Gazette.