(dramatic voice) Well, hello there.
(sniff) I have this weird tendency to do this thing
where (sniff) it's why they invented Breathe Right strips so that when you lift up this, (sniff) you can breathe.
I'm like, "Oh I should just get like a permanent (sniff) thing."
I don't know. Anyways, OK.
Here we go.
Hi, my name's Father Mike Schmitz and this is Ascension Presents.
I was thinking about this recently about how I approach gifts.
You know—presents, gifts, abilities
but one of the things I do with gifts is sometimes I have a tendency to take gifts for granted.
And I know this might be a problem that a lot of people have.
We take gifts for granted.
What I mean by that is this:
It's not that we're not appreciative. It's not that we're not like, "Oh yeah, that's nice!"
It's this: it's I often don't think about gifts until they're gone.
For example, I don't often think about the gift of my health until I'm sick.
I don't often think about the fact that I can run until my knee hurts and I can't run.
I don't often think about the fact that I have time until I have no time
and then it just becomes a complaint.
So I was thinking about this
but do we appreciate the gifts when we have them?
And I'm not talking just like your huge gifts,
I mean your daily gifts.
As an example, if you can listen to this
if you're listening to this right now, that means your ears work.
When was the last time I thought, "Oh my gosh God, thank you so much that my ears work."
if you can see this, that means your eyes work.
But have I stopped and thought, "God, thank you so much"?
Or even, if you have glasses or contacts or you had LASIK surgery or something like this,
like, "God, thank you so much for the invention of the eyeglass or the contact or LASIK!"
If you were able to walk to your computer to watch this, that means your legs work.
If you're watching this at work and you actually should be working, well ...
do it on break,
but that means you have a job, whether the job is fantastic and everything you dreamed of
or if it's just something that pays the bills.
The crazy thing is we have all of these daily gifts that I think a lot of times, at least myself, I've taken for granted
and I only pay attention when they're gone.
So how do we avoid this?
The Bible has this word and the word is thankfulness, the word is eucharistia— thanksgiving.
The word is gratitude.
Like I need to cultivate this interior disposition of gratitude.
Honestly, think about it. If you went through your entire day with the disposition of gratitude,
that every time you saw some kind of gift whether it's huge or small, normal or unusual,
that you would just have your automatic response (snap, snap) would be I'm grateful for this.
I'm thankful for this.
From the small stuff to the big stuff, I think a lot of things would change.
But do you think, "How can I really truly thank God for the gifts he's given me?"
Again, one is have that disposition of gratitude,
have that attitude where I see things and I recognize, "God, I'm thankful." Actually, say thanks.
But something happened a number of years ago,
I was actually in high school, I think, and I heard about juicing, not steroid use,
but when you take vegetables and fruit and put them in a machine and juice it.
So, I asked for Christmas I'm like, the one gift I want, I want a juicer.
So ultimately my parents— Christmas, here it is. Here's your big gift.
Here's some juice.
And I proceeded to use it once ...
and then I let it sit on the shelf,
because I found out when you juice, you have a bunch of extra steps
between you and juice.
Like going to the store and buying vegetables and buying fruit
and then afterward, you have to clean this juicer which is a pain in the butt.
So I used it once.
I said thanks when they gave it to me. I'm very grateful. I'm incredibly grateful for this.
But I remember (laughs) one day they said,
"Hey, have you been using the juicer?"
And I thought ...
"I'm really thankful for it ...
but then it stopped right there."
You know, I was reading in the Gospel of Luke.
In the Gospel of Luke chapter 4, there's a moment where Jesus goes to Capernaum
and he has Simon Peter's mother-in-law
and it says Simon Peter's mother-in-law was lying there, he went to her house,
she's lying there with a severe fever so Jesus stands over her, rebukes the fever, heals her
and then the next line is—you probably noticed this before—she got up immediately and waited on them.
I remember when I was a kid reading this and even relatively recently going,
"What?!? Are you kidding me?
She was just healed from a severe fever and it's like,
"Oh, by the way, you're healed now. Go make me a sandwich."
Like that's ridiculous!
But that's not what happened.
What's revealed in this, not only is God's incredible power to not just heal but to give strength
so a person can move, like Simon's mother-in-law is fully healed.
She's not like, "I'm now better but I still have to rest."
She is healed and she's given strength.
So that's one piece of that, that she's fully healed, fully recovered.
The other piece is this:
Jesus gave her a gift.
He gave her strength, he gave her healing
so now she can use that.
The way that she can thank Jesus is by using the gift that he's given her well.
and this is one of the great ways that you and I can thank anyone for a gift that they've given us.
I can say, "Mom and Dad, thank you so much for the juicer,"
and then never use it and be like, "Well great. I'm glad I gave you the juicer?"
The Lord God can give you so many gifts.
You might not have all the strength you want. You might not have all the healing that you're praying for.
But the truth of the matter is this:
You do have a certain degree of strength.
The truth of the matter is you have some degree of healing.
You have some degree of power.
You have—you, right now, have gifts
and if you're thankful to the Lord for those gifts,
the question is not have you thanked him?
Although that's a good question—
the question is have you used those gifts for him?
Even if that gift is I got a day off today so I used that gift and I rested
and I got a break today and I used that gift and I was able to nourish my mind and my soul.
I had an opportunity to help someone that was a gift and I used that gift.
Today ...
I invite all of us, including myself, to stop taking those gifts for granted
but instead take the next step which is to not just be thankful for them but to use them.
What's the gift that God has given you today, that he's asking, if you want to thank me, just use it.
Just use it with joy, use it with strength,
use it with power, use it with grace.
You've got a gift.
All you have to do to thank God
is to use it well.
From all of us here at Ascension Presents, my name is Father Mike.
God bless.
I was thinking about juicing like (in Arnold voice) Arnold Schwarzenegger,
"Get to the choppa!"
"Come on! Do it! Kill me! Kill me now!"
I have a dubsmash of that. Dude, I should send it to you.
Well, I don't know. You might not like it.
Do you like dub smash?
Let me know.