Entitlement.

One thing I have been thinking a lot about is our (America's) corporate sin of entitlement, i.e. how we feel that we deserve things. It's all over the media, and all over our speech. The ad for the spa says that we deserve to treat ourselves because we've been stressed. When we go to restaurants and the food is sub-par, we complain to the manager and demand to get the beef re-cooked (or demand a new one). When we buy a blouse from a store and decide we don't like it, we bring it back for a refund, and when we are not able to get it we get angry because we feel like we SHOULD get our money back, even though this is probably the only country in the world that allows you to buy and return. When a particular coworker doesn't speak nicely to us we get so angry because they are treating us like crap. We tell white lies to get our way. We take as many free samples as socially acceptable.

I think of the poor. They don't get any of these things that we feel we are entitled to by right, and yet their joy in the smallest things most Americans think are lame. I think this says volumes in itself.

And then I think of the Gospel. What we really deserve as sinners is God's wrath. And yet God sent His one and only Son from Heaven to drink that cup of wrath and to take the punishment that we really deserved... which continually blows my mind each and every day. This particular passage from Romans 5:6-8 comes to mind:

You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

We are entitled to nothing. And yet by God's grace we have every spiritual blessing in Christ.

God is sooooooo good, the depths of which we can never fully comprehend in this lifetime!