Count your blessings for what you have in life
MY GRANDMOTHER used to call it “Counting her blessings”. These days we are encouraged to keep Gratitude Journals in which we record each day, the things that we are grateful for. The principle is the same. In every generation we have recognised that gratitude is good for you and even better for those who have to live with you.
If you have ever had to be with an ungrateful person for any length of time you will know just how unbearable they can be. Some years ago a lady complained to me that she hadn’t eaten a sweet orange the entire season. Given that I knew her as a grumpy ingrate, I caught myself wondering if all the oranges really were sour, or if she was? Could her sourness have spoiled the taste of perfectly good citrus? The Jewish holy books, the Talmud say: “We never see things the way they are, we see things the way we are”. Gratitude changes the way we are and sweetens our lives too. I have been greatly privileged to spend time in very poor communities. Working mainly in the church, I have seen poor people gathering in ramshackle buildings Sunday by Sunday to worship. The dignity and decorum of these proceedings would fit right into the world’s greatest cathedrals, and in the rituals of my tradition, there are always prayers by leaders for the officiating minister before the service. What has humbled me is that inevitably these prayers begin by thanking God for having woken up alive and being able to walk to church.
These simple words, oft repeated, are the marks of pure gratitude.
Sad to say, I never heard similar sentiments from the wealthier congregations in town where no one had walked to church, no one was hungry, and no one’s life had been at risk through the night. There was seemingly little reason to be grateful and it showed in the prayers.
Which leads me to ask: “Do we become less grateful in proportion to our wealth and security?”
Is it true that the more independent we become, the less we appreciate life’s blessings? If you can solve all your problems simply by throwing money at them, why would you acknowledge the presence of grace and blessing?
Could it be that the deepest wound in the Western soul is our attitude of entitlement which makes us sour and bitter people, always demanding that life be lived according to what Frank Sinatra’s crooned as, My Way?
As I look around me I am confounded by the whingeing demands from we who have so much, and the simple appreciation of those who are happy with so little. Their bitter conditions are sweetened daily by their appreciation for life.
Gratitude for what we have, instead of wailing for what we have not, is the way to deep inner peace. Try singing along with Granny, “Count your blessings. Name them one by one. And it will surprise you what the Lord has done.”
Peter is a conflict mediator and pastoral therapist