{"id":332,"date":"2025-10-01T09:40:37","date_gmt":"2025-10-01T17:40:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.st-lukes-la-mesa.org\/wordpress\/?p=332"},"modified":"2025-10-01T09:40:37","modified_gmt":"2025-10-01T17:40:37","slug":"counting-our-blessings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.st-lukes-la-mesa.org\/wordpress\/?p=332","title":{"rendered":"Counting Our Blessings?"},"content":{"rendered":"We often hear the phrase \u201ccount your blessings,\u201d but what does that mean? Upon reflection, it can be taken positively or negatively. For example, \u201ccounting one\u2019s blessings\u201d could be an expression of gratitude for the good things which we have received in life. Alternatively, it could refer to a sense of relief when one realizes that others have experienced greater loss or misfortune that we have experienced. Either way, when was the last time that you \u201ccounted your blessings\u201d?
Even with the best of intentions, that might be a hard questions to answer. After all, what exactly is a blessing? The Oxford Concise Dictionary defines blessing as: \u201c1) God’s favor and protection, 2) a prayer asking for blessing, 3) a beneficial thing for which one is grateful, 4) a person\u2019s sanction or support.\u201d In addition to these various meanings, defining this term can be particularly problematic if the blessing is \u201ca blessing in disguise\u201d!

Perhaps the greatest obstacle to us counting our blessings is not a matter of definition but of disposition. According to the formal definitions above, a blessings is primarily something which is given to be received by another. In that respect, a blessing is a gift, is something granted, and perhaps that makes counting them difficult. This may be so because we take just about every aspect of our lives \u201cfor granted.\u201d This disposition often leads to a sense of entitlement, and when our sense of entitlement is called into question, then our sinful sense of envy frequently takes over.

This dynamic of envy is as old as humanity itself. \u201cIn the beginning …,\u201d after God created Adam and Eve, God gave them a glorious garden filled with every living thing. Everything creaturely was granted to them. What more could they want or need?

The crafty serpent, however, came up with an idea for envy. He led Adam and Eve to believe that God was withholding something from them, namely his divinity. In reality, God was doing nothing of the sort. A creature is a creature made by a creator. A creator does not make another creator. Thus, by their very natures as creatures, Adam and Eve were complete. God had given them their existence, life, and a universe in which to live in relation to God, to one another, and to everything else. In other words, all of reality was created as God\u2019s pure gift to humanity.

When Adam and Eve, however, started listening to the serpent and stopped listening to and trusting God, their whole perspective was distorted and destroyed beyond belief. When they stopped believing God, they started to assume that God\u2019s gift was now their possession to which they were entitled. Furthermore, this sense of entitlement extended to wanting to be like God himself (Gen. 3:5). Humanity continues to maintain this disposition; so hopelessly possessed by its sense of possessing that God is perceived not as their creator but as their enemy, even as the devil himself (Mt. 12:22-24).

So, when we wake most days, we take it for granted and \u201cearned\u201d that we wake up in our beds. We take it for granted that we get dressed in our own clothes, in our own homes, in our neighbourhoods, in our towns, in our country, etc. Beginning each day with such grandiose entitlement, when was the last time that you stopped and thought that each breath which we take is a gift of the atmosphere which is part of God\u2019s grand creation? Unconsciously, minute by minute, breath by breath, our bodies inhale and exhale in rhythmic fashion free of charge our atmosphere which provides us with the life-giving and life-sustaining oxygen for the entirety of our lives. Yet, we take each breath thoughtlessly and thanklessly for granted.

So, when was the last time that you stopped and considered that each breath is a blessing? Likewise, almost entirely unconscious of its continual efforts, when did you last thank God for every heartbeat which brings that life-sustaining oxygen to the thousands of cells in your body? Sadly, we probably worry instead whether our stocks are up or down, whether our cars are new or not, whether our clothes are out of fashion, or whether our cell phones now being twelves months have reached obsolescence! In a life plagued with envy, the breathing and beating which keep us alive remain taken for granted.

Instead of thanking God for each and every breath which we take (from his creation) and instead of counting each breath as a blessing, our sin has so warped our perception of God and of the reality created by his breathed word that we not only take his creation for granted, but we also expect God to fulfill our godless fancies and fantasies. Then, when God does not do so according to our wishes, we write him off as no God at all and withhold our belief. In this, our sinful derangement, we like Adam and Eve exhibit our blindness to the fact that the \u201cgod\u201d of our fancies only exists as an atheistic figment of our distorted imagination.

Into such idolatrous godlessness, God\u2019s son, the second person of the Trinity, became incarnate of the Virgin Mary and became man. After roughly 33 years, our sinful godlessness caught up with him. While hanging on the cross, \u201cJesus said, \u2018Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.\u2019\u201d Then, \u201c… calling out with a loud voice, said, \u2018Father, into your hands I commit my spirit!\u2019 And having said this he breathed his last\u201d (Luke 23:46). ","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We often hear the phrase \u201ccount your blessings,\u201d but what does that mean? Upon reflection, it can be taken positivelyRead the Rest…<\/a><\/p>\n

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