Success has a way of making...
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Success has a way of making you too big for your britches. In fact, success is often a function of "the cards you've been dealt" in life --
your gene pool (whether you inherited intelligence) and how you get your money. In a recent best-selling book Capital in the Twenty-
First Century, French economist Thomas Piketty has demonstrated statistically that the global market is rigged so that those getting
income from investments (and many of the wealthy get those as a birthright) will almost inevitably get richer than those living from a salary.
(This explains the ever-growing disparity between rich and poor.)
Martin Luther well expresses these findings, reminding us that everything good in our lives is something God did for us or through us:
For when wealth abounds, the godless heart of man feels: "I have wrought these things with my own efforts." Nor does it notice that these are simply blessings of God sometimes through our efforts, sometimes without our efforts, but never from our efforts and always given out of his free mercy... He uses our effort as a mask under which he blesses us and dispenses his gifts, so that there is a place for faith.
(Luther's Works, Vol. 9, p. 96)
This recognition is good for us, cuts us down to size in a healthy way. As John Wesley put it:
The mercies of God, if duly considered, are as powerful a means to humble us as the greatest afflictions, because they increase our debts to God and manifest our dependence upon him. And by making God great, they make us little in our own eyes.
(Commentary on the Bible, p. 139)
Thanksgiving makes you a little less full of yourself, a little easier to live with.
Martin Luther well expresses these findings, reminding us that everything good in our lives is something God did for us or through us:
For when wealth abounds, the godless heart of man feels: "I have wrought these things with my own efforts." Nor does it notice that these are simply blessings of God sometimes through our efforts, sometimes without our efforts, but never from our efforts and always given out of his free mercy... He uses our effort as a mask under which he blesses us and dispenses his gifts, so that there is a place for faith.
(Luther's Works, Vol. 9, p. 96)
This recognition is good for us, cuts us down to size in a healthy way. As John Wesley put it:
The mercies of God, if duly considered, are as powerful a means to humble us as the greatest afflictions, because they increase our debts to God and manifest our dependence upon him. And by making God great, they make us little in our own eyes.
(Commentary on the Bible, p. 139)
Thanksgiving makes you a little less full of yourself, a little easier to live with.
