10 Usually Neglected Reasons Why You Should Be Grateful to God Everyday!

Many things in this life are taken for granted! Especially the free things! If you have got good parents who are always providing for you financially, chances are you might not know you are a king already. If you have your family and good friends that are always ready to give you some good advice and shower you with love and care, do you know how lucky you are? Do you know what if feels like to have none of these…do you? If you have a caring and loving spouse who dotes upon you all the time, believe me when I tell you that you are blessed even though you might not recognize this!

It is always as if the human nature is structured towards neglecting or treating with disdain anything that has no serious or heavy price tag on it.

Reasons for this condition could not be far from the fact that there are so many distractions in this world today coupled with the ever-struggling life of getting more and more of anything we desire such as money, power, respect, accolades, sex, and freedom and so on. Thus many people lead ungrateful lives in one way or the other always complaining of never having enough and always feeling dissatisfied.

But is it supposed to be like that?

I don’t think so. I believe that if we could take a brief moment to appreciate some things that we have already, indeed we will always find the very best reasons to give thanks to God or the Universe.

Let me proceed to mentioned some of these often neglected reasons:

1. Gift of life/today

This one should never be neglected at all. Everybody knows that we are blessed because we did not die yesterday. We have been given another opportunity to make things much better for ourselves and the rest of mankind or to correct the mistakes that we have made in the past.

The truth is that the gift of life is nothing but a second chance and we all know that nothing could be better than awarding someone another chance to either make things better or to right the wrong. But when you watch how many of us go about in our daily lives in terms of recklessness and complete disregard for human life, you start to wonder if we really know the value of this precious gift of life/today which we have been freely given.

2. Gift of freedom

The gift of freedom is one thing we have given to us in abundance. By freedom, I mean the ability to choose when to wake up in the morning, when to go to bed at night, when to eat, when to brush our teeth, when to go to the toilet, when to surf the web and so on without being locked up in a prison like a common criminal or a caged animal.

The fact that we are free to move around and make some important decisions on our own is something that calls for daily thanksgiving to the Universe but funny enough we do not so much recognize this gift of freedom. There was a day when my brother and I decided to lock ourselves within our small space thereby restricting our freedom of movement just to experience what it is like to be locked up in the prison. The self-inflicted torture lasted for about 16 hours but it was like hell! The gift of freedom is worth appreciating if you really come to think about it.

3. Gift of eyesight

Do you know what it is like to be physically blind? Have you ever wondered what the world of any blind person is really like…how dark it could get? But thank God we have got our eyesight. We can freely appreciate the good things of life because we can see them. We can see our parent’s age, our children grow up, we can see our magnificent houses and cars and other belongings, and we can see our world and all its magnificent beauty!

This gift alone is one of the most neglected! The only problem I see with this gift of eyesight is that we can also see and then feel the massive injustice, abuse, wickedness and manipulations going on around us too! Yes this is true but I wouldn’t like to dwell so much on this because I am yet to see that person who is ready to exchange his/her eyesight for anything less just for the negative reasons aforementioned!

So we should really be grateful to God for this wonderful free gift of eyesight!

4. Gift of good health

The person who is NOT sick may not know what the value of the priceless treasure he possesses. That’s a fact! But when you really come to think about what the sick person is missing, how terribly bad he feels coupled with the great pains he is in, then you may whisper a small silent prayer of thanksgiving anytime this wonderful though confronting thought crosses your mind. I have heard the stories about people with shattered bones who have been confined in orthopedics for more than 23 months with no hope for them getting any better in sight!

I have seen people (actually vegetables) who are so sick that they can barely help themselves on anything else again and their only hope is for death to come and put them out of the misery that have been in for so long. But that has not been our portion! We are hale and hearty glory be to God. We can move around, we can go to work, we can travel around, we are in good mood, we can laugh, we can go to the parties, we can go to the restaurants, we can listen to news, good music and watch our favorite TV programs, we can browse the net, we can take our studies and meals too all because we are in good health.

So why are we still prone to complaining?

5. Gift of free air to breathe

Do I need to dwell on this well-known fact? We are free to have the free air to breathe freely. This is one of the freest…no, it is the ONLY free gift on earth! Imagine what it would have been like if we were supposed to pay as we breathe…

Inasmuch as that thought is ridiculous, it is still shocking that we neglect this fact everyday. If you can hold your breathe for a minute or two without gasping for your dear breathe when you finally release yourself, you may not be among those who will truly appreciate this gift of free air to breathe.

But even at that, we can be rest assured that the air we breathe will always be free and that is a major reason why we should always thank the universe.

6. Gift of water

There was a day I asked my crazy friend this question: what do you think we would have been using instead of water? The crazy girl gave it some thought for some seconds and then she chorused “who knows…maybe blood!”

We laughed over it. It was funny but then I noticed that there was this small fear and confusion in her eyes which she felt while she was considering the alternatives!

Maybe I should have asked her “whose blood?”

The fact remains that water is more than essential for our daily survival on earth as we use it for every conceivable productive human activity you can ever think of.

But how many times have you come to appreciate that cup of drinking water you are about to take or that water you are using to bath?

You see?

7. Gift of electricity

The only thing that can bring the world to a total standstill except nuclear bombs if no electricity! Somehow on survival on earth has been seriously tied to that important form of energy resulting from the existence and/or movement of charged particles (such as electrons and proton) in electrical conductors.

What if there was no electricity? What could we have been using in its stead? I shudder in such thoughts.

Yes! Electricity has formed a major part of our lives to the extent that its adequate or steady provision is regarded as the benchmark of distinguishing between the developed countries from the so-called developing world!

Our electronics and computers run on it, our security systems depends on its availability, our homes and hospitals run on it, our sole happiness, enjoyment and pleasure is connected to the availability of electricity in one way or the other…

In fact, it is electricity (plus money) that makes our world to go round.

So that is why I think we should be grateful to God for allowing that very important invention to have occurred.

8. Gift of sanity

Whenever I observe insane people walking about the streets, I shake my head. They move around, sometimes naked, haphazardly, talking to themselves all the time. They stay and feed in refuse dumps and so they are usually very dirty and haggard making other sane people around to always avoid them all the time. Everything about them speaks of complete lack of care! It is really a shameful world, theirs!

One prayer keeps on coming to my mind: thank God, I am not mad!

What about you?

9. Gift of appetite for food

Have you ever suffered from loss of appetite for food? You see food or even perceive its aroma and immediately you are disgusted at once. You see people feeding like never and you tell yourself these people don’t know how lucky they are. You are weak and tired but you cannot just help it. You just want to get back to your normal eating ways.

But many people who are consciously eating are unconsciously unaware of this wonderful gift/ability they have.

10. Gift of conscience

Yes, the only thing that has kept the world in check and everything in place is the existence of conscience amongst human beings. By conscience, I mean the good conscience actually.

What would the world have been like if people had no conscience, if people had no emotions and feelings towards each other?

I am very convinced it would have been a very difficult and terrible place to live in.

But thank God, we still possess that good human conscience which enables us to think twice before dishing out that act of wickedness, which restrains us from committing evil or dastard acts whenever we so wish with reckless abandon, which encourages and enables us to even put others first in whatever good deed we are doing, which enables the world to still be a better and safe place to live in notwithstanding the massive evils, crimes and murders still going on in alarming rate in our world today!

But do you really cherish the gift of good conscience?

The truth is that no matter what we are going through in life today, no matter how bad and hopeless things might seem right now, there is always one or more reasons to thank God or the Universe because no matter how bad the situation is right now, you know it could have been…worse?!