Counting our blessings instead of sheep
Two old friends bump into each other. One of them is on the verge of tears. The other asks, “What has the world done to you, my old friend?” The sad fellow says, “two weeks ago, a cousin of mine died, and left me eighty-five thousand.”
“Sounds like you’ve been blessed…”
“You don’t understand!” he interrupted. “Last week my great-aunt passed away and left me a quarter of a million.”
Now he was really confused. “Then why do you look so glum?”
“This week - nothing.”
A movie theater began a short film with a snapshot of the room ceiling. Just a white ceiling. The same scene played for eight long minutes. Some complained, and others started to leave. Suddenly, the camera lens moved downwards to show a small child lying on the bed, suffering from a spinal cord tear. The camera then pans back up to the ceiling with the following words: "We showed you only eight minutes of what this child watches at all hours of his life. Sometimes we need to put ourselves in another’s shoes in order to realize the magnitude of our blessings.”
We should count our blessings instead of our wealth, as this column title suggests. A friend of mine on Facebook begins each day with a sparkling message of thanks to God for all of today’s blessings. We enjoy God’s favour and do not appreciate it nearly enough.
The Washington Post did a social experiment where they placed a world-renowned musician with a three and a half million dollar violin to play Bach to passers by for forty-five minutes. Two days earlier the same performance sold out in a Boston theatre at one hundred dollars a seat. Today, a few children turned to see, but their parents soon pulled them along. About twenty people dropped a total of thirty-two dollars in the hat.
What is the central motivation in our lives? A TV evangelist promises: "If you listen to me and choose Jesus Christ as your Savior, you will have better health; you will have wealth; and don't forget to support this ministry." There is an obvious shallowness to this gospel of prosperity pitch.
Good people of strong faith also suffer. It is painful to observe, but they lose sons and daughters to tragic accidents. They, too, suffer illnesses and struggle in life. And when life becomes too difficult, they hear Jesus say, “Come follow me. Pick up your cross and follow me. I will make your life full in a different way.”
Grace and inner strength are ours in Jesus. There is a scene in Blue Bloods where Frank Reagan says to a policeman who has been shot and is on his way into an ambulance, “You know who you are. Be that.” We are challenged to live the life of stewardship to which our baptism calls us. Later in the same episode Reagan gives this advice: “Do the thing that scares you most. All the best things in life are on the other side of that fear.”
Many of us share death as the ultimate fear. Even here, faith saves us. St Ambrose said, “God did not will death in the beginning; he gave it rather as a healing medicine. For once man was condemned to lasting toil for his sins, his life became wretched; there had to be an end to the misery so that death might restore man’s original condition [immortal life].”
“Fear not, I have redeemed you” (Isaiah 43:1).
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