But my God shall supply all your need according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus. (Philippians 4:4, 19)

Do you remember the 1979 movie, “Monty Python’s Life Of Brian”. I can imagine that quite a few of you would never have watched something so irreverent … but I was young and unsaved… One of the best moments is when the bumbling  bureaucratic terrorist Reg is trying to sell his plan for the uprising to his followers. It degenerates when he asks “what have the Romans ever done for us.” Here’s the dialog from the end of the bit: 

Reg: All right… all right… but apart from better sanitation and medicine and education and irrigation and public health and roads and a freshwater system and baths and public order… what have the Romans done for us?

Xerxes: Brought peace!

Reg: Oh… (scornfully) Peace, yes… shut up!

This wonderfully funny passage comes to mind sometimes when I hear people’s ingratitude to God. Every so often I start to list what God has done for me on any given day. Take today, for instance:I woke up to the gift of a new day. I was next to my beautiful wife. We were in a comfortable bed in our comfortable house. I picked up our bedside Bible and read our morning devotions. A little later and I enjoyed my light breakfast (and my second cup of coffee). Once I had showered (enjoying the gift of hot water) and dressed, Myra drove me to work in the car God has provided for us ….and so it goes on, all day long. It is no surprise of course. The Bible tells us, time and again, that God will take care of all our needs. Matthew’s gospel gives just one example:

Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment? Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they? (Matthew 6:25-26)

I know that it’s easy for me. I am not so much of a fool that I do not know how blessed and privileged I am. I know there are starving children, abused wives, cancer sufferers, orphans … so what has God done for them? Apart from life, and breath, and a world to live in, what has the Lord done for them? Given them eternal life, that’s all:

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. (John 3:16)

I know what He’s done for me. What’s He done for you?