-
Are You Lamenting or Whining?
We live in a culture of complainers. Everywhere we turn, we hear complaints. The culture’s bad. The neighbors are bad. Life’s not fair. Why can’t we have what we want when we want it. You know what I’m talking about. I listened to a sermon series1 recently on the book of Habakkuk. Habakkuk looked around him, seeing all the injustice, and challenged God on why He wasn’t doing anything about it. Habakkuk asked God a bunch of “why” questions and “how could you let that happen” questions. The speaker asked this question, “Was Habakkuk lamenting or just whining?” That question struck me. The answer has stuck in my brain for…
-
Quit your Whining! Entitlement or Thanksgiving in Disasters
The news reports of the power outages in the eastern part of the U.S. in the wake of Hurricane Irene last week include a lot of whining. Knowing that reporters tend to go for the dramatic, it is likely that such people are in the minority, but the stories bother me. We have many relatives and friends in southeast Texas who have dealt with longer outages from previous hurricanes who refrained from whining, realizing that repair takes time when damage is widespread. So far reports that I have seen from this week’s Texas wildfires focus on people thankful for their lives, even while they mourn the loss of everything they…
