What, no "Hallelujah"?

"For many in the United States, the phrase Smoky Mountain conjures up images of breathtaking beauty in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park between North Carolina and Tennessee, the most visited national park in the country. For most in the Philippines, Smokey Mountain conjures up images of the last place on earth anyone would want to visit.
Hundreds of families live on the edge of the city’s garbage dump nicknamed Smokey Mountain because, during the summer months, the mountain of rotting garbage often ignites underground and sends out toxic clouds of smoke that hang over the area like a blanket.

This is the rainy season, so the smoke is drowned out by the rain. Of course, rain just brings on a different kind of misery — thick, stinking mud.

Smokey Mountain is one of the five poorest places in the world. The people who have built homes here make their living by scavenging through the city’s garbage looking for items that can be recycled for money. The average return on a hard day of ripping through bags of stinking trash is around 200 pesos — about $2 in the United States.

In the 1970s, what was once a small village by the sea became the growing, burgeoning city of Manila’s primary dumping site. By the early 1980s, Smokey Mountain became an international embarrassment to then President Ferdinand Marcos. He had the site bulldozed, and new public housing was built for the poor about 25 miles south of Manila. The dump was closed in 1995, and the "new" Smokey Mountain opened a mile away.

Families who could not make the minimum $8 monthly mortgage payments in the government-built apartments were forced once again into shacks along the new garbage heap."
(Kathy L. Gilbert, www.umc.org, 10.17.07)

I want to tell you that it ticks me off - more than a little bit - how ungrateful we can be. I'm not saying "everyone else is ungrateful", because I am as well. Overall, we are one of the most ungrateful people groups on the face of the planet. We have so much to be thankful for, and yet, we forget it all when things get difficult. We complain and whine and wish things were good for us.
I am especially disappointed right now in those of us who have been complaining about the raise in gas prices, but now that they are down, we haven't even whispered a hallelujah. I don't care if the drop in price is temporary or not, it is still a blessing. Will we complain to the Father when things are bad, and then not even praise Him when they are good?