How Blessed Are You?
Consider the following poem and How Blessed Are You...
If you woke up this morning
with more health than illness,
you are more blessed than the
million who won't survive the week.
If you have never experienced
the danger of battle,
the loneliness of imprisonment,
the agony of torture or
the pangs of starvation,
you are ahead of 20 million people.
If you attend a church meeting
without fear of harassment,
arrest, torture, or death,
you are more blessed than almost
three billion people in the world.
If you have food in your refrigerator,
clothes on your back, a roof over
your head and a place to sleep,
you are richer than 75% of this world.
If you have money in the bank,
in your wallet, and spare change
in a dish someplace, you are among
the top 8% of the world's wealthy.
If your parents are still married and alive,
you are very rare,
especially in the United States.
If you hold up your head with a smile
on your face and are truly thankful,
you are blessed because the majority can,
but most do not.
If you can hold someone's hand, hug them
or even touch them on the shoulder,
you are blessed because you can
offer God's healing touch.
If you can read this message,
you are more blessed than over
two billion people in the world
that cannot read anything at all.
You are so blessed in ways
you may never even know.
Stephen Eardley
"Reconnections & New Directions" 2003 Conference
Lester B. Pearson College
That's a very powerful, but humbling poem, and it brings reality to home with force!
My parents brought me up with the policy of no matter what's going wrong in your life, there is always someone worse off, I try to remember that.
My boss was brought up with the same belief, and last year, she had a terrible year, her husband died of a heart attack very suddenly leaving her with 2 young children, one of them being only 1 year old, the other with severe special needs, he may never talk, and may die before he reaches his 6th birthday, she has struggled to keep them living in their home, and has cried nearly every day for a year.
It was very humbling therefore, when she turned round to me and said " I don't know why I'm crying like this, there's plenty of people worse off than me".
After seeing how she had spent the last year since her husband had died struggling and grieving, it was hard to think that there may be people worse off, but while some of us humans continue to think of others first, there will always be hope for the less well off, or the needy.
This is something I always tell my wife about. There are times when honestly we see ourselves as cursed. Statistic wise we seem to have come out on the upper end of the world's survivalist so for that I am blessed.
I like the poem in that it helps me keep in mind there are those less fortunate than myself, and I wouldn't want to trade my problems with theirs. Doses that however make me more blessed than they are ?
Jesus truly had a unique perspective. As the future king of God's kingdom, knowing what blessings that kingdom would bring he could encourage the down trodden, letting them know future blessings were in store for them, also showing they were worth much in Jehovah God's eyes.
JB will you, and yours be blessed to a greater extent yet? That would be a wondrous thing.
Post ID:249088
You are hard to follow David I think largely because you try to make each Thread about the Jehovah Witness school of thought. This Thread is about the words of Stephen Eardley. Based on what he outlined I AM VERY BLESSED NOW. This is not considering any future blessings to come, who will be blessed in the future is NOT what this Thread is about, this is about considering your ability to have things NOW that MANY others do not have NOW.
Off Topic replies have been moved here: Source 6 so that the subject of this Thread is kept.