Take for granted

4 October 2009

There is an idiom that says, “Familiarity breeds contempt”. It means the more you know about something or someone, the more you start to find faults and dislike things about it or him/her.

While it may not hold true all the time, it is almost always true that familiarity breeds “taking for granted”.

We all have experiences of becoming familiar with a person that we fail to appreciate him/her. Or with an object – we encounter it so frequently that it no longer makes an impression on us; we take it for granted.

Repetitions and rituals are okay; but seriously – it would be nice to have a change, so every now and then.

Some of us are so familiar with Christianity that we take it for granted. We have been in church long enough to justify the usage of the phrase, “there is nothing new under the sun” – in this case, the church.

Some sermons sound like recycled stories from of old. Some pastors resemble nagging parents we would rather shut out at home. Some praise songs even sound like broken records after a while.

Let us not take the sacred and make it ordinary. Let us not take our religious freedom for granted. Let us not take our weekly church assembly for granted. And let us not take the cross for granted.

For in so doing, we have actually taken the Lord Jesus for granted.