Property Tax Day Celebration - July 21, 2008

Today is Property Tax Day here in Indiana. I have capitalized it so we might see it as a celebration day, a holiday, rather than an expensive obligation. Holiday? Doris, you’ve got to be kidding! I believe it is a privilege to live in a city in the United States of America. I consider it a blessing that water comes into my home through pipes rather than from a pitcher pump in the back yard from which I must fetch it. I feel blessed that my children receive a free education from the time they are five-years-old until they are 18+, and other blessings I can not number. I am sure you can make your own list. Please take the time to do so as you pay your property tax today. Let us pray:

“Oh loving Father, we praise your name above all names. May we see your kingdom come and dwell within us this very day, so your plan for our lives may be fulfilled in your time. We pray today to receive a blessing as we pay our property tax, a blessing of joy and thanksgiving. We thank you for clean water, smooth roads, safe neighborhoods, free education, help in time of fire and disaster, and so much more. We have an abundance of everything and are so blessed. Forgive us when what we have is not enough, not big enough or fancy enough for our own sense of entitlement. Open our eyes to your blessings that fall around us freely, like the gentle rain from Heaven, refreshing and nourishing our very souls. Keep us from self-centeredness, self-praise, and self-interest. Deliver us to a right relationship with you, oh Father, where we are God-centered, full of God-praise, and seeking God’s-interest. Let there rise up a new generation, not the me-generation, the You-generation, where You, Father God, are at the center of our lives. In your precious sons’s name, Jesus Christ, our Savior and Redeemer, we pray. Amen.”
Doris Rapp
Copyright 2008 Doris Gaines Rapp, Ph.D.
“God gives us stories that testify to His love. Let me tell you mine.”