It’s Wednesday. What’s different about Wednesdays is that we get milk. We go to the farm for our milk. We take our glass bottles back and get new milk in clean glass bottles. It is a good experience. That is what is different about Wednesdays. I am thankful for the milk it is a blessing to have milk fresh from the cow. Not very many farmers offer it and it is against the law to sell it. The only way you can get it is if you invest in the farm.
I am going to learn to be more specific about my blessings. Blessings are those things that are in my life that are a help and benefit to us. The good things. We all have negative things but sometimes the negative are really only very small compared to the amount of blessings yet we tend to focus on the negative so that it seems incredibly huge.
God wants us to look at all the good around us. The reason he did mighty things for the Hebrews in the early years of their existence was so that they could remember how good He is, and how much He loves them, when they came into hardships again. We all have hardships. No one is exempt from them, some have more hardships than others, yet the blessings we have always outweigh the hardships if we would only open our eyes and take the time to look.
It can be helpful to list the blessings and write them down. It’s when I decide to do that that I realize how little I have noticed, and how hard it is to think beyond the same few things. It is like the saying goes, ‘You don’t know how good you have it until it’s been taken away from you.’ Still we don’t know how good we have it. Really. All around me is beauty, little pieces of beauty, big pieces of beauty.
Timothy said, “with food and clothing let us be content.” 1 Timothy 6:8. That really breaks it down. Sometimes we want more than that and rightly so. When my daughter was in hospice and I went to live her last few days there with her, I didn’t care much about the clothing or the food. All I wanted to do was stop this train from wrecking. I just wanted to wake up and it was only a very long nightmare. Even then, I was surrounded by blessings. People coming from everywhere, even from other countries to bless her last moments, sing to her and kiss her. A restaurant came and cooked a meal for her there at the hospice. Served the meal as though for a queen with fine china and beautiful glasses. Flowers filled her room and people had to be managed to give everyone a chance to see her. She was so happy she barely knew she was dying, though she was in a lot of pain. She praised God constantly. Others came with money and gifts to help make us comfortable. Her boss for whom she had worked only a short time made sure that she was covered financially and helped to meet her spiritual needs as well. So even in the deepest of hardships we found many blessings, like ointment on a wound. Like salve on tired, dry skin, we were blessed beyond our expectations. And yet I still feel stingy when attempting to name the blessings of my ordinary life. As though such a thing would be a waste of time. As though it doesn’t need to be confirmed.
Recently, the pastor delivered a sermon about the power in a name. He explained how giving something a name gives it a new dimension and power. Take cancer for example. Once our unwellness is given the name ‘cancer’ it begins to take on a new meaning for us and it changes the way we relate to everything around us. In this way I want to name my blessings and take the time to give them meaning to my life and power to fill me with joy and awe. There is power in a word, in a name. I want to spend the rest of my days naming the blessings around me. Giving them power to change my view.
Thank you for reading this. I hope that you too can see the many, many blessings around you. If you care to, name a blessing, and leave it in the comments. That can help someone else to recognize the blessings in their life as well.
One of my daughters favorite songs was, “the Blessings” by Alabama.
To read the lyrics and listen, click on this link.
