Soap Box

We Americans have become a race of spoiled people. Technology and science have provided us with conveniences that have lengthened our lives and shortened our steps, things once considered wonders that we have assimilated into our lifestyles and now take for granted.

We tend to get frustrated when the batteries in the TV remote become weak and wont change the channel in two seconds or the garage door opener gets stuck and a flat tire is enough to bring on a hissy fit.

We forget that a few short years ago you had to walk up to the TV and turn a knob, get out of your car and open the garage door, get back in the car and drive through and then get out of the car and close it again, and flat tires were a pretty common occurrence that could be remedied with a jack and a lug wrench in about ten minutes.

Now we spend more than ten minutes cussing and fussing about it before we even start to go through the convoluted process of locating the jack.

We complain if the traffic is slower than usual, if the mail is late, if an outing gets rained out or a faucet drips.

There are people you dread to see coming or to talk to on the phone because they always find something to complain about, in fact some of them are serial complainers and have refined complaining to an art form.

"Sally was supposed to pick me up for work this morning and she called about ten till and said her baby was sick, well its no wonder she lets it eat all that junk, so I drove the car in, but Bill had forget to fill it up and I ran out of gas right in the middle of the road, if I�ve told Bill once I�ve told him a thousand times to keep gas in the car, anyway I went to call a tow truck and my cell phone was dead and I had to leave the car and walk up to a drugstore and use the a pay phone but I didn�t have any change and the druggist couldn�t break a twenty, anyway, he let me use the his phone and it took the tow truck two hours to get there and I had to sit in the car and wait in that 90 degree weather and when the tow truck came all he did was put five gallons of gas in the car and charge me seventy five dollars and then I was three hours late getting to work and that little smart aleck supervisor, you know the one with the frizzy hair and wears all the make up, well she just chewed me out. How was your day?� 

Although I am by no means immune to a little complaining I have discovered that it�s a total waste of time and is a source of irritation to the people you happen to be around. Nobody wants to hear anybody else complain, it�s like finger nails on a blackboard.

Practically all the doctors I go to have their offices in a big hospital and it only takes going by for a check up for me to realize that I really have no complaints. I see people who have a lot more to complain about than I do.

When I see a mentally disturbed street person or a parent with a sick child or someone who has lost their job or a wounded warrior returning from Afghanistan or a cancer patient fighting for their lives, my complaints seem so insignificant as to be non existent. 

Complaining can become a habit, a part of one's personality and become so natural that they approach any situation that is less than perfect by complaining.

The Bible encourages us to fix our thoughts on the pure, the lovely, the positive.

It takes a lot more energy to think bout something negative as it does to think about something positive.

It�s natural to become irritated when things go wrong, but if we'll only admit it, most of our problems are small and dealing with them in a positive frame of mind makes solving them a much simpler task. 

Complaining about something won't make it go away, deal with it and count your blessings

What do you think?

Pray for our troops and the peace of Jerusalem

God Bless America

� Charlie Daniels

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