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    When Keith Obraske stopped by an ATM in Fridley, Minnesota, a year ago this Wednesday, his intention was to get $20. He needed just a few bucks for the day. In goes the bank card. He presses a few buttons to identify himself. Then he hits the key that is supposed to generate a quick, crisp $20-bill. Now he’s on his way. But wait . . .

    Here comes a second $20-bill. Then a third. A twenty-third! A hundredth! Before Keith Obraske’s ATM machine quit spitting money at him, it dispensed $5,580. When I saw the Associated Press report of the Minnesotan’s unexpected good fortune, it dawned on me that his experience at the ATM was something of a parable of my life. One week and one day before Thanksgiving 1999, what happened to one 23-year-old reminded me of my daily experience with God.

    “I felt like I’d won the lottery,” said the young man who works as a ceiling sprayer. “I just kept scooping it up!”

“Every desirable and beneficial gift comes out of heaven.”

    Me too! Every day of my life is just that way. God gives sunshine and rain, light and dark, work and rest. The love of my wife, children, and grandchildren. Friends. Sisters and brothers in Christ. “So, my very dear friends, don’t get thrown off course. Every desirable and beneficial gift comes out of heaven,” writes James. “The gifts are rivers of light cascading down from the Father of Light. There is nothing deceitful in God, nothing two-faced, nothing fickle” (James 1:17, The Message).

    Christians confess we have no claims or demands to press against God. He has taken the initiative with us and provided our salvation through the atoning work of Christ. You would think, then, that gratitude to him would flow naturally from our human reason. Often it does not work that way. “For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him” (Rom. 1:21).

    Oh, we know we did not make ourselves. We experience the bounty and generosity nature bestows. And we confess that salvation is God’s free gift to us in Christ. So it should be an easy, natural, and frequent thing to give him thanks. But it isn’t. It is easier to receive, ask for more, get it and think it happens because of our creativity and hard work.

    By the way, Obraske did the honest and honorable thing with the ATM money. He took it back. You aren’t expected to take God’s blessings back to him in abject self-denial or to give them all away. But it is appropriate to say “Thank you!”

    If your table is brimming Thursday, give thanks to the One who filled it.

© 2000, Rubel Shelly. Used by permission. From Rubel Shelly's "FAX of Life" printed each Tuesday. See Faith Matters for previous issues of the "FAX of Life."