It is just mid-August, and I can feel fall in the mountain air already. We have been in Colorado for nearly two weeks. These crisp mornings remind me of my childhood. Then, I eagerly anticipated the first hint of a season change and the chill of autumn. One day comes that divides summer from fall. 

Well, that morning came today in Pagosa Springs.  Of course this is early for Texas. I understand it is still in the triple digits at home. I am glad to be resting here for another week. 

We are in a time share we have enjoyed for many years. In general, we have been pleased with the time share concept and enjoyed some amazing places nationally and internationally. Some have been luxurious and others really upscale. But this one in Pagosa Springs, although touted as one of the best, was disappointing.  

It was clean but not luxurious, not upscale. The company had assigned us to an older and smaller unit that faced a parking lot. Our hearts sank when I arrived. The unit didn’t even have a porch or a view. We came for the view! 

And we had planned on being here two weeks—the bulk of our vacation was to be spent enjoying the mountains from an upscale place! Wayne called and wheeled and dealed, but the place was packed; the newer and bigger units with views had long been promised to others. We sighed and unpacked.  

And then I thought of one word: entitlement. Yes, I felt entitled to a nicer place. We had been members of this time share for years, and it had been a great experience. Yes, it was our only two-week stretch of respite the whole year.  I felt entitled. 

In Dennis Prager’s book Happiness is a Serious Problem (www.dennisprager.com), he writes about expectation. One key that he has found to happiness in every circumstance is to give up expectation. Not hope, but expectation. He embraces the attitude at all times that no one owes him anything. This is his key to happiness.  

Sometimes Christians feel entitled because they serve God; and the longer they serve, the more they deserve. I find traces of this attitude in my own life. And I do think it is based on the trappings of our culture rather than the Bible. The American dream acquires success, and the signs of that success are wealth and affluence. American Christians often bring that attitude into their relationship with God. 

One of my heroes, Paul from the New Testament, said that he learned to abound and abase. That means that he had things and didn’t have them. He knew how to handle it. I don’t think that meant that he went from being poor to being rich. I believe that his life of service to God and the saints went up and down financially—his whole life. God gave him the grace and joy to embrace it and recognize blessing in all of it.  

Paul tasted true riches that do not fade away. 

I am contemplating the pressures that the Christian sub-culture bears on believers—that financial gain is a sign of His blessing and mediocre living is sign of not giving enough or putting God first. Entitlement is intertwined in this thought. 

Paul divested himself of attitudes of entitlement.  

Yes, God wants to bless us, but He yearns for us to see that we are blessed even when we aren’t living high on the hog in the lap of luxury all the time. And He definitely does not approve of attitudes of entitlement about it. 

There is contentment that surpasses the reality of having much or little.

I am contemplating the battle for contentment in my own life. I am contemplating gratefulness and God’s goodness to me in all circumstances. It is in Him that I live and move and have my being.  

If God would remove His hand from me for one second, I would be utterly destroyed. 

God will never let Wayne and I get comfy with the expectation of greater and greater abundance. He is always pressing us into true riches—highlighting the eternal and diminishing the temporal. Entitlement does not figure into the equasion. 

The fall breeze is blowing in from the window, yes the window that looks out onto the parking lot; and I am so grateful to be alive on this beautiful day and in this beautiful place! 

I am focusing beyond the view–let’s see, there are a few evergreens next to the parking lot; and they look taller, more green than when we first arrived.