Everyday Blessings We Take For Granted

By Tyler Cantrell

It didn’t seem like anything but a routine family outing. My wife, Ashley, and I had taken our 5-year-old daughter, Ava, out to eat and shop. We are blessed and can do this frequently. It was a crisp cool day, and we could feel that spring was approaching. After we had lunch at a pizzeria, I walked into a nearby store with Ava. She was standing in front of three mirrors in a dressing area, dancing to the music playing in the store. I started filming the moment, and she caught me and ran toward me laughing.

The date was Saturday, March 7, 2020, and it was the last time we would have a regular family outing before COVID-19 changed everything about our society and world. I would often miss those moments and frequently went and watched the short video on my phone … reminiscing over the last shred of family normalcy we experienced for some time.

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“I had taken for granted the normalcy and peace I was experiencing in my family, ministry, and professional life.”

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By the next week, Ava was doing all her schoolwork in our living room, Ashley had made a makeshift home office upstairs, and I couldn’t hold any in-person worship services at any of my ministries. The pizzeria we had eaten at wouldn’t survive the pandemic, and we would lose a few friends as well. What I learned from this was I had taken for granted the normalcy and peace I was experiencing in my family, ministry, and professional life. It is dangerous to not appreciate the seemingly mundane portions of our lives.

Ava never even got to say goodbye to her kindergarten class or teacher. I would go through a pastoral move and not get proper in-person goodbyes with my former congregants. Ashley’s entire industry moved to a work-from-home format. The world was forever changed. Some for the better — working from home has its advantages. Some changes were for the worse, as many children were forced to learn from home. This has created educational gaps as some caregivers were not prepared for this. Ava’s grade is known as the “COVID class” as they lost valuable and developmental instructional time in one of the most formative of their learning years. We will feel the effects of this for generations.

In a moment, anything and everything can change. Normalcy and peace can disappear in an instant. The things we take for granted can be shattered by a variety of things: life-altering events like Sept. 11, 2001; a tragic accident or death; a medical diagnosis that means endless treatment and expense. All these things can happen in the blink of an eye. In mere moments, we can begin to value things we once took for granted.

Global and Individual Stress

We are currently in a very stressful time in our world. War has raged for months in Ukraine and Russia. Now the Middle East has once again been ravaged by attacks and brutal killings. There is war on both sides of the oceans surrounding us. Many are talking of another world war and the dangerous implications of the killing devices that we now possess in this world. It’s a shame that any country has weapons of mass destruction. I personally wish they never existed. My wishes are just that, and the reality is our everyday routines and ways of life could change in an instant. Many of our brothers and sisters around the world have already had their routines and families shaken. Moments like Sept. 11, Pearl Harbor, and Hiroshima seem perilously close for all of us.

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“Change in this world is surely inevitable.”

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I sit typing this in a cancer center. My mother is taking the second round of a new cancer treatment. As I look around, I see many tired faces. Some that have just received unfortunate news and many that are just tired of the stresses of their loved one’s treatments. I sometimes long for the life my mother had before cancer. Yet this is the reality we face, and I am thankful for the time the treatments continue to give us.

The point is we need to always be grateful for the seemingly mundane moments and realities we often live in. There is no guarantee that they will remain this way. In all actuality, the only guarantee is that they won’t stay the same. Change in this world is surely inevitable.

Giving Thanks Always

Ephesians 5:20 says, “Giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ” (ESV).

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“Let us find joy in the simplicity of our daily lives.”

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Let us not cease to give thanks for the little things — the seemingly insignificant pieces of our everyday lives. In a short time, we may find ourselves longing for them and scrolling through our memories wishing to go back. Give thanks in all things and as the world inevitably changes, let us stay steadfast in Christ. Valuing each moment and opportunity we have.

Lord, as war rages, diseases continue to exist, and accidents remain possible, let us enjoy the most out of each precious second we are given from You. Let us find joy in the simplicity of our daily lives. Let us not lose a single moment of happiness because we carelessly disregarded the gift of peacefulness in our day-to-day life in this broken world. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

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