Today, I'm feeling grateful. I should feel grateful everyday because I am very blessed, but today my gratefulness is off the charts and this is why:
We just had a freak winter storm and several pipes froze and busted in our apartment complex. My husband and I were fortunate enough to have somehow eluded this mess leaving our apartment nice and dry. There were at least three other apartments who have severe water damage, including my friend's apartment...right.next.door. It could have just as easily been ours, leaving us with weeks were of damage to clean up. When I walked into their living room I saw a ceiling with 5 or 6 tiles completely gone, exposing all the inner workings of the apartment. The next thing I saw was a concrete floor where the nice vinyl floor used to be, along with a mass amount of water dripping from the saturated insulation above their living room. It got worse from there: a couch ruined, pictures soaked and a home in complete disarray.
My heart is aching for my poor friends who did nothing wrong but are still suffering the consequences of this unfortunate happening.
I got to thinking about it late last night after we had helped our neighbors move some of their valuables into the spare room in our nice, dry apartment. I was very thirsty, so I poured myself a big glass of water and drank the entire thing. Water. I just cannot wrap my mind around how one thing can be absolutely vital to our lives and yet, at the same time, can completely destroy our lives. Then it dawned on me; everything in moderation.God gives us everything we have. He gave us life. He gave us a home. He gave us each other. He gives us jobs and money and friends and everything else under the sun. He teaches us too, that we may learn to live lives of moderation. This, of course, is all a metaphor for the "flood" that happened next door considering they did not choose that for themselves. It simply has taught me that a lot of a good thing quickly becomes a very bad thing. I believe this is true for every good thing in our lives.
In Galatians 5:13 it says, "For you were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another."
So as an adult we are given the freedom to make our own choices, but we should always remember that abusing that freedom will surely lead down a road of ruin. This doesn't mean that we can't indulge in life's greatest gifts to us, but that we should simply do everything in moderation and remember that we are here to serve one another and not ourselves.
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