"Taking every day as a gift"

We hear this around all the time yet, it seems never enough to think about the true meaning of it over and over again...

Also, we often say or hear people say, "God's punishing us.", "God's listening to our prayers." etc. It is clear that we, human beings, feel better knowing that someone else can take the blame on behalf of us especially during the bad times of our lives. Well, clearly I am not talking about natural disasters which we have no control over and certainly it's not a sign of anybody being punished by God - it is just part of nature that we must accept.

As we all know, there is no one particular figure of God. Every individual's definition of God is different but at the end of the day, no matter who your God is, it is really YOU that make choices and have to be responsible for them. Hence, it's not unreasonable to say that whether it's your respective God figure or yourself, it is YOU that end up punishing yourself and listening to your own prayers at the end.

Further, it is clear that YOU are the only one that can forgive and redeem yourself from the bad choices you've made. Confessing your sin to a pastor doesn't make your sin go away; talking to a shrink doesn't make your problem go away. You are the sole entity here that can make things right.

It is up to you to decide whether you would like to take every day as an opportunity to turn the "punishment" into a "gift" - having a free will on this matter is perhaps another gift. Ultimately, life is about making the most out of our given circumstances (that are sometimes good and sometimes bad) to seek for redemption otherwise we simply have no choice but to be remained punished. And, let's not forget, we all make choices that we have to redeem ourselves for some day whether it was intentional or not in this life time - no one is perfect.