By Stephanie Salisbury

If you’re reading this:
…you’re alive.
…you’re literate.
…you have time on your hands.
…you’re not starving in a third world country.
…you’re not a refugee in a prison camp.
…you’re not at your child’s funeral.
…you’re not standing in a minefield.
We have so much to be thankful for that we consistently take for granted.  We should be smiling more. We should be thanking people at every opportunity. We should be thanking God each day we wake up.
When we’re used to blessings, they mean less to us. We’re used to having plenty of food, to clean water, plumbing, electricity, two-car garages and cars to put in them, endless forms of entertainment, blankets on our bed. We’re accustomed to having so much clothing that we get to choose what to wear each day. We’re used to being able to walk, to a furnace in the winter and blissful A/C in the summer. Yet, whatever this wonderful life drops in our laps, we’re always more concerned with what this terrible life is throwing at us.
We have become entitled.
If you have $6 in your wallet, you can get a Starbucks Frappe and leave a small tip or you can feed a child in a third-world country for a month.
A MONTH.
For a few bucks here and there, which you might toss aside for a pack of chewing gum and a Mountain Dew, you could buy mosquito nets to save ENTIRE FAMILIES’ LIVES in Africa who might otherwise die of malaria. You can help provide clean water for whole communities. You can be instrumental in preventing people from HIV infection. You can make a difference.
All of these things you and I take for granted?
For every one of us, there are tens of thousands of people who don’t have the opportunities we do.
Who don’t have the comfort or safety we do.
Who don’t have the rights we do.
Instead of this sense of entitlement that permeates every aspect of our lives, there should be an overwhelming joy in our hearts each and every day we’re alive for every blessing that comes our way.
I want to start living that way today.
How about you?
You can read more at www.AJourneyofReinvention.com or on Facebook.