Living on the Coast, we take things for granted. We have an abundance of places to get good…fresh…seafood. We can pay someone to prepare it, or we can go down to the dock and get it right off the boat. Be wary of someone selling shrimp out of a van in Kansas.
We can also go down to the river and watch the boats come in and go out. And…if you watch closely enough, you might be able to find a dolphin breaking the water in the wake of a shrimp boat. You just don’t have that everywhere.
One of the things I’ve done all my life is ride down to the beach and look at the Gulf. There is nothing like cruising the beach. My parents did this with us when I was a kid…my wife and I did it when our girls were small…and now my oldest daughter does it with her sister in the passenger seat. Growing up by the water and seeing the amazing sunsets is just a part of life on the Coast.
These things…because we experience them over and over…can become common to us.
A real, honest-to-goodness shrimp po-boy can easily become nothing more than something to fight off hunger pangs. But if you live in a place where shrimp comes breaded in boxes at the grocery store next to the frozen fish sticks…you wouldn’t take a po-boy for granted. If the only dolphin you have seen was on television or in a tank…you haven’t truly seen the beauty of one of God’s most graceful creatures breaking through the water to draw in air.
If all you have ever seen is concrete and hard landscapes, a Gulf Coast sunset might change you forever.
We can do things and see things so often that we fail to appreciate them. Take, for instance, the song “Amazing Grace.” Most people I know, churched or unchurched, can sing at least a little bit of “Amazing Grace.”
If we are not careful, though, we can sing along with the music and miss what we are singing. It was God’s amazing grace that saved a wretched sinner like me. It is God’s amazing grace that not only saved me…but that will usher me into heaven one day. God’s grace is amazing. Let’s not take it for granted.
Every morning I try to tell my wife, “I love you.” My girls won’t go to bed, even though they are both teenagers, without telling me goodnight and “I love you.”
Repetition can steal sincerity from our words. “I love you” can become just something we say…no different from “Talk to you later” or “Have a good day.”
Hopefully, you have people in your life to whom you routinely say, “I love you.” The next time you do this…mean it. Don’t just mouth the words.
We treat the word love too casually. I love Moon Pies. I love hot dogs. I love Jell-O with “stuff” in it. But I don’t “love” these things like I love my wife and daughters.
So let’s appreciate the blessings of life that are at risk of becoming common. Sing songs of the faith…but mean what you are singing. Tell people you love them often…but earnestly. See God in the everyday things like a sunset or a good shrimp po-boy.
Scott Sullivan 
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