1305) Teaching the principles of cause and effect is fun. I’ll come up with a list of the “causes” and the kids must fill in the “effects.” It’s fun because kids add their own experiences to their answers. For example, if I put as a cause: you drop a fragile plate, they might finish the sentence with, “you get yelled at.” Their answer is correct in their experience, but there is a more fundamental effect they skip over and that is, of course, “the plate will break.”

Children don’t always understand that when you do “this”, the results are usually “that.” They also don’t understand that the inversion is also telling. You broke a plate, therefore, you must have dropped it.

My reflection on this principle comes to mind because when you have an ungrateful person, they are usually this way because they have the sense of entitlement within their being. I deserve what I have gotten, or I earned it. Period. Someone who displays gratitude recognizes that what they have (regardless of how they got it) is a gift, ultimately from God (James 1:17.)  

Paul tells us in 2 Timothy 3:2 that in the last days, people will be ungrateful. There will be little recognition that God has provided anything. Why? Because if you do not know and embrace, by faith, who God is (or at least the little portion we can understand in this world), you have no reason to be grateful in the spiritual sense. What difference does this make? When a society values only self-sufficiency or dependence on anything other than God, they do not need to embrace salvation or biblical principles. They also have no reason to be grateful to God. This also means people will not experience the blessings of gratitude that takes place within.

Being grateful reflects the need and dependence upon the giver. Without it, self-sufficiency (cause), which is a lie, puts dependence on ourselves and left at that, disaster (effect) is inevitable.