PERISCOPE: HOW GRATEFUL ARE WE TO GOD? (Advocate against cheating and of peaceful co-existence)

The Year 2021 is still a baby at breast. Its future is still unknown whether it will grow up to help tend the world to be the serene Garden God wishes it to be. We are all gardeners in this vast expanse of the World, with a Compassionate and Merciful God always showering us with a lot of bounteous blessings as incentives to work hard, always avoiding impersonal acts.

How are we grateful to this Master of the Universe? When you find yourself in untold wealth, do you attribute it to your own hard working nature? How do you let other unfortunate Sons and Daughters of this world benefit from your wealth?

Yes, you are hardworking and generally industrious, but have you paused for a second to think about the fact that it is God who gave you the strength, the intelligence, and all the attributes of success?

You go to the farm to plant cocoa seeds, for instance. You return home to sleep and snore. The next time you visit your farm, you become excited when you realise that the seeds have germinated! Since the Sons and Daughters of this world have taken things for granted for far too long, you do not delve deep into the cause of the germination of your cocoa seeds you put into the ground.

In your absence from the farm, God makes sure that your planted seeds get adequate sunshine, water and air. You may, even, be tempted to give credit to agricultural experts who usually give useful pieces of advice to farmers. But, at the end of the day, the overall credit goes to our Supreme God.

Politics has been described, in some quarters, as the shortest route to riches. How are the beneficiaries of such untold wealth being grateful to God for such bounteous blessings? Instead of showing God that they owe Him a huge debt of gratitude, some of these politicians rather use their money to engage in destabilising activities against their own countries. Atrocious acts of brutality are their daily cup of coffee!

It has been observed that philanthropists grow from strength to strength in wealth. and the reason is not far-fetched. They recognise the fact that it is God who gives them the riches. Thus, they must support the vulnerable in society as a sign of gratefulness to God, who supplies all our needs.

The tiny human head has performed numerous feats. It has invented ‘adupre” (aeroplane), which cruises in the sky with human beings in its belly, the TV sets, which enable us to know of events happening in other parts of the world.

The latest feat in our part of the world is the cell phone, commonly called mobile phone, which can let you mistake the user in the street for a lunatic. The user will be seen standing alone or throwing the hands about either in anger or in joy. Yeah, that is the product of the small human head.

Other feats are ships, wireless sets, electricity, radios, telephones, fax machines etc. When it comes to architectural wonders, the small head is not found wanting. Remember how the twin towers of New York looked like before Osama bin Laden’s boys reduced them to rubble (Please, refer to Daily Graphic of Wednesday, September  12, 2001, front page).

Look at one of the daughters of this world with a belly full. That is one of God’s limitless miracles for which we must be grateful to Him. But scientists will just tell you that the woman’s conception is the result of some biological process. Correct. But who made that process possible? Of course, GOD!

Don’t you even marvel at how male and female are attracted to each other through that inexplicable phenomenon called Love? Love is so irresistible that the one who created it must be revered with a large dose of gratefulness.

You are seriously sick but you later recover. Instead of crediting God with your recovery, you go about bragging: “Yadie a meyere no edi me ara”. The sickness I suffered, if not for my own nature of bravery, I would have died, loosely translated.

With these limitless blessings from God, how are we, in reciprocation, showing our gratefulness to Him? What we should understand is that we are all strangers in this enclave called The World. God is our Host. As strangers we are expected to put up good behaviours, as a way of being grateful to our HOST.

It is not too late for us to turn over a new leaf and behave like grateful guests to our Divine Host. He is long-suffering, merciful and compassionate, and will always receive us with open arms, PROVIDED we show genuine repentance, whenever we offend Him, either consciously or otherwise.

To be able to do His will to show our gratefulness to Him, let us understand that GOD IS LOVE (1 John 4:8). If God is Love and we show love to our neighbours, it means we love God.  This is  simply because God  is man and Man is God, since man moves about with God’s holy breath  in him (Genesis 2:7). Man was also created in the image of God (Genesis 1:27). This simply means that when you offend your neighbour, it is God you have offended.

Let us count our blessings from the moment we were placed in our mother’s wombs and we shall be overwhelmed with surprise about what God has done for us. Let us, therefore, resolve to be grateful to God, our Host, by loving one another, for where there is love, there is no fertile ground for any type of misunderstanding to breed.

God’s wishes, with LOVE as the base, are not costly at all. It is man’s inordinate greed, selfishness, avarice, callousness and inconsideration for his fellow human beings that have made it difficult for him to do God’s wishes. But God easily forgives at the least sign of genuine remorse and repentance.

LET US ACT FAST in showing our gratefulness to Him, for He deserves it.

Meanwhile, may Baby Year 2021 grow up to see Mother Ghana’s transformation into the earthly Paradise, where every Kofi, Kwadwo and Ama will feel proud to stay, work and finally, bow out  of existence in DIGNITY.

By GODFRIED K. ARHIN-KUMI

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect The Chronicle’s stance.

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