“You will be blessed the moment you realize you already are.” – Bryant McGill
Hope you are having a tremendous week with blessings chasing you everywhere you go. Even more, I hope you notice those blessings. Sometimes we stay so busy that we don’t always pay attention to the good things in our lives.
At my little country church we have a time during our service where we can not only mention prayer concerns but also praises and thanksgiving reasons. Those mentions go on a Thanksgiving and Praise List in our bulletin. It’s a great way to consciously think about the blessings in our lives.
The things we mention aren’t necessarily big things. Of course, they can be. A new grandbaby is a big thing. A good doctor’s report can be a special blessing, but we like to mention our everyday blessings too. Things like the sunshine. And we don’t forget to be thankful for the rain too. We thank the Lord for birds and the flowers, especially at this time of the year when birdsong fills the air and blooming flowers like the crabapple blossoms in the picture chase away memories of winter. Other things might be a child’s smile. A good sermon. A spirit-lifting card in the mail. Being alive. Friends. Our church family. The Bible.
The list can go on and on. Things like a good day at work. For me that’s words to share a new story filling up my monitor screen. A restful night’s sleep. Maybe new parents would be thankful for a baby sleeping through the night for the first time. A new rosebush. An old rosebush blooming. We are so blessed by so many things. Right now I’m feeling blessed to have a dog snoring on his bed behind my writing chair.
We’re also blessed with numerous electronic devices to entertain us. At least I think that’s a blessing – most of the time. But I read an article once about boredom. The writer noted how now we have many electronic means of entertainment, especially that amazing cell phone in our hands that we can use to keep in touch with friends, make new friends on social media, watch movies, listen to music, play games, look up almost anything we’re curious about and who knows what else. The writer claimed that due to that ease of entertainment we rarely have times when we’re not busily filling our minds with outside noise and pictures from our electronic sources. We don’t let our minds just idle with nothing to occupy us since entertainment is available at the touch on a screen. We hasten to fill any moment we might feel bored.
But those mind idling times are also times when our thoughts can wander and from that wandering comes new ideas. When I first got married and had two little children, time was at a premium. Fortunately, I had to iron every week. Didn’t feel too fortunate at the time since that was prior to permanent press clothes. I don’t think there’s anything much more boring than pressing pants and shirts. It doesn’t take much thought, so that was when I could think up new things and write poems in my head. And what sounds more fun than sitting on a porch as the sun comes up or goes down and letting your thoughts meander down memory lane.
I get to let my thoughts meander when I’m taking the dogs on their walks. I leave the earbuds at the house and listen to the sounds of nature around me while my mind idles along. A person has to have a few quiet moments now and again and a little boredom never hurt anybody. Unless of course you grew up on a farm and made the mistake of telling your father you were bored. Then you might be out in the field picking up rocks or chopping thistles while your mind did some idling!
I hope you have some restful moments this week to gather your thoughts and come up with some great new ideas. I need to have some of those ideas showing up to get my work in progress on toward those magical words “the end.” I’m about a hundred pages away from that now and hoping I can fill those hundred pages with words that will matter, but that’s a post for a different day. Today I’m counting the everyday blessings of spring and life.
You are one of my special blessings. I so appreciate those of you who read my meandering thoughts on One Writer’s Journal and read my stories as well. Some of these thoughts come from a post I wrote back in 2008, but I thought you might enjoy a revamped version of that post.
I hope you run out of fingers and toes to number all your blessings this week as you think about those everyday blessings. Tonight, besides Marley snoring behind me, I’m hearing spring peepers outside. The blessing of hearing spring.
“Reflect upon your present blessings, of which every man has plenty; not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some.” – Charles Dickens
What everyday blessing can you count today?