What do you take for granted in your life? Now this is a question you likely didn’t expect to be asked today. But there it is…it is a great question. What do you take for granted in your life? Should we each get out a notebook or maybe open a new document in Google Docs and start writing/typing our list? It would be amazing to see the length of the list that each of us could come up with in just 15 minutes of responding to this question…what do you take for granted in your life?
Where should I start? I take it for granted that there’s going to be a sunrise each morning, meaning there’s going to be the gift of a new day. I take it for granted that my lungs and heart will keep on working. I take it for granted that my car will start each time I get in it. I take it for granted that our refrigerator is going to keep the milk and orange juice I drink in the morning nice and cool. I take it for granted that the food I eat each day isn’t going to make me sick. I take it for granted that Nancy, my wife, is going to keep on loving me and helping me in the journey of life. I take it for granted that my computer will keep on working so I can do some of my ministry work. I take it for granted that my keys to the church and office are going to work each day. (That’s the running joke around the office…you’ll know you don’t have a job when your keys don’t work.)
This little list above simply took me, maybe four to five minutes to come up with. So, triple this for my 15-minute list of what I take for granted. Even as I continue to type this, I’m thinking of more and more things that I take for granted. Now I’m not saying we should become suspicious about everything; inspecting every chair before we sit in it, or hearing all the details about how a meal was prepared before we eat any food. I’m sure it is true that I shouldn’t just take my relationship with my wife and her love for granted. Doing so is not a healthy or positive thing for any relationship.
Those of you who know me well know that I like to investigate the history of hymns – to hear the backstory of what inspired their writing. Well, one of my favorite hymns that is at times sung this time of year is the hymn, “Count Your Blessings.” It was written by a man named Johnson Oatman in 1897. Johnson’s father had a beautiful singing voice and Johnson, not so much. He wished he had a voice like his dad’s but knew that would never be. He became a Methodist Episcopal minister and in the course of his ministry he started writing hymns. 200+ hymns a year flowed from his pen and he finally realized he did have a musical gift, it just wasn’t singing; it was writing hymns.
Count Your Blessings wasn’t Johnson’s favorite hymn, but it quickly became his most popular hymn. It was a reminder to Johnson, and the world, that blessings abound and that too often we do take so much in life for granted. Even back in 1897 when Count Your Blessings was written, Johnson realized there were so many blessings in life. And as we look around ourselves today in 2023, we can see the same thing that Johnson did in 1897; that too often our eyes are closed to the blessings that daily surround us.
May we each open our eyes or take off our blinders and truly see the blessings around us. May we recognize and even try counting our blessings. Just think of what that would do to the attitude in our community, our state, our nation, our world if we took time to truly recognize the blessings in life. This is a great time of year to give thanks and to count our blessings. Go ahead and do it. Take out a pen and paper or open that Google or Word doc and start your list… “name them one by one.”
Pastor Keith