Count your blessings
Dear friends,
There’s an old children’s chorus that goes like this: “Count your blessings, name them one by one… And it will surprise you what the Lord has done.” When was the last time you did that? When you stopped and listed some of the many good things God has given you and done for you, and then thanked him for them? It seems such a simple thing to do, and yet something we easily neglect. Sometimes it seems easier to list the things we’re unhappy about, the things we wanted God to do for us, but he hasn’t.
The New Testament is full of reminders to give thanks to God. For example, the apostle Paul wrote, “And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him” (Colossians 3:17, NIV). That seems pretty all-encompassing! On the other side, he said it was the mark of unbelievers that “although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him” (Romans 1:21). When he declared the first American Thanksgiving holiday in 1863, Abraham Lincoln admitted that, “we have forgotten God … we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us.”
When we stop thanking God, we become proud, or bitter, and we forget how good God has been. So, count your blessings, name them one by one, and it will surprise you just how God good is. And don’t forget the spiritual blessings either!
Chris Hobbs,
Vicar.