Unseen Blessings

Psalm 34:8 – Taste and see that the Lord is good; blessed is the one who takes refuge in him. (NIV 2011)

A country church in our area has one of those signs which gets changed periodically. Some time ago, it displayed this saying: "Count your blessings, not your troubles." I thought that statement was a really good message. It made me think about my blessings, and I hope that others who saw it would as well. We are so prone to dwell on the things which are bothering us that we are not even aware of the blessings that we have experienced or are experiencing right now. From a strictly human point of view, the blessings seem to be hidden from us. They seem to be covered by the mundane things in life.

Everyone's life has its ups and downs. We may not be happy with what is happening, but we grudgingly accept it. As one of my grandsons quite often says when things don't go according to plan, "It is what it is", and we cope the best that we can. Sometimes, really good things happen to us, and we just take it for granted.

While I was thinking about this, our water bill for two months came in. I was shocked by the amount for several reasons. There are just the two of us living in our house. We are very frugal when it comes to consuming water. It has been a wet summer here in southern Ontario, Canada, and we have not needed to water our garden or flower beds. Yet our bill was, in our opinion at least, extremely high, and I fretted about that.

That evening, watching the news, we saw that there are in excess of 275,000 people in Yemen who have cholera, and 5,000 new cases are expected each day, mainly because their water is contaminated. I woke up in the middle of the night, thinking about this, and I was ashamed that I had complained about the cost of our clean, unlimited supply of fresh, potable water. I had failed to see that blessing, which was hidden in the size of the invoice.

There are times in our lives when we just can't see the blessings that we are experiencing, and it is at times like that when we need the power of faith in God to realize how blessed we really are.

Ephesians 5:19b-20 – Sing and make music from your heart to the Lord, always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. (NIV 2011)

Seeing and being aware of God's blessings has always been and is still important, right here, right now.

If we are unhappy about some things in our lives, let's make sure that we don't miss the blessings that we do have.

Prayer: Our Father in heaven, we ask that when we worry, when the problems of the world overshadow us, You will make us aware of the blessings that we do receive from You. We ask it in Jesus' name. Amen.

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