Dear Lord,
I am currently so depressed. Plain ol’ Jane got that promotion and that dumb John got a trip overseas. But they’ve been here for a shorter number of years, and they work below me! Yet I am still stuck here. Please do make a change in my life. Amen.
Seems familiar?
That’s just how most of our prayers usually go. We tend to focus our prayers on asking the Lord for what we want, but we forget to tell Him “Thank You”. When it comes to finding favours with other mortals, we tend to overwhelm them with our gratitude before asking for the favour, but when it comes to God, we take Him for granted and just start complaining.
Everything for good – in the words of Tenali Raman

This is not a Bible story, but we can see how it is relevant to the topic. Once, when King Krishna Deva Raya was going on a hunt, he cut his hand and lost a finger. Everyone panicked, but Tenali Raman said, “All for good”. So the king got furious, and cast him into the prison. Then while hunting, the king lost the other members of his group and was caught by a cannibalistic tribe. They were going to sacrifice and eat him, but when they saw his cut hand, they let him go, as they didn’t sacrifice those beings which lacked a body part. Thus when the King came back, he called back Tenali Raman, and apologized. But Tenali Raman said that it was a good thing that the King cast him into prison, else he might have been killed.
Sometimes, we may lose a finger or be cast into prison – not literally these things, but they can be synonyms for any problems we face daily. Once we learn to say, ” Lord, thank You for this”, we can see the bigger picture God has in mind for us.
Today, I took up the challenge to not murmur or complain about anything, and just thank the Lord for everything – I did fail once when my computer stubbornly fended off my attempts to start the server to do my work. But I persisted and said “Thank You, Jesus”, and then I realized that I had a good opportunity to prepare for some Sunday School activities while I was waiting to do my work.
Truly, we can grumble and mumble all we want, but what we need to know is that, once we learn to thank the Lord for all our troubles, we will realize that they were never troubles in the first place.
Verse to Remember
1 Chronicles 23 : 30
New International Version
They were also to stand every morning to thank and praise the Lord. They were to do the same in the evening.
New Revised Standard Version
And they shall stand every morning, thanking and praising the Lord, and likewise at evening,
King James Version
And to stand every morning to thank and praise the Lord, and likewise at even: