When I moved to my new (yet quite old) apartment in Seoul, I was extremely annoyed that my shower didn’t work properly. It oscillated between scalding and freezing at random and often lost pressure multiple times per shower. How could I survive like this?!
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During my outreach trip to Cambodia, I witnessed dozens of ‘street people’, men women and children, who worked from sunrise to sunset picking up recyclables from the endless mounds of garbage on the streets for a meager profit, coming ‘home’ at night to their tattered cardboard boxes on the ground.
Their showers consisted of hosing themselves off briefly on the side of the road in their underwear before putting their dirty clothes back on and falling asleep, exhausted, only to repeat the cycle again before the sun rose. This was how they survived.
Suddenly, my malfunctioning shower didn’t seem quite so tragic. In fact, as I stood there on the street, shocked, humbled, horrified, I realized that my shower is in fact, an incredible blessing.
As tears slipped down my cheeks, I asked God to forgive me for my deep selfishness. And I praised Him. I praised Him for blessing me with SO many things in my life that I don’t deserve; things that I take for granted every single day. My freedom. My family. My friends. My home. My finances. My health. My job. And needless to say, my beautiful blessing of a shower.
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Dear Lord, please open our eyes to see how incredibly fortunate we are. Please help us to not take for granted the many blessings You’ve entrusted us with. Please inspire us to use our blessings to bless those less fortunate. In Jesus’ Name, Amen.
A Girl After God's Heart 