When I was growing up, one of the things that my parents always tried to teach me was to “count my blessings”. I never really quite understood that phrase, but now that I am older I find myself doing that very thing. More than once, I have been silently reviewing each of the blessings in my life and thought “okay Lord….when does the other shoe fall?”. Have you ever done that? Have you ever thought to yourself “what have I done to deserve the grace and blessings that I have received”? Don’t get me wrong, it’s not as if we have won the lottery, live on our own private island and have no troubles in this world. There are days when you wish you could just go to bed and start all over again. For the most part, I find myself overwhelmed by the things that I consider to be blessings in my life. Yet I still can’t help but wonder what waits around the next corner. Will there be a tragedy that I wasn’t expecting, a loss I didn’t anticipate, an event that I didn’t plan for or will the blessings simply run out and the luck end. It’s in those moments that I am quickly reminded of two things. First off, even if by some chance they did, shouldn’t I be more than thankful for the multitude of blessings that I have been given to this point in my life? Won’t those same blessings be the thing that carries me through anything else I could face in this lifetime? Secondly, isn’t God’s grace sufficient for even those times when everything else seems to be gone? Keith Urban sings “But for the grace of God go I, I must have been born a lucky guy. Heaven only knows how I’ve been blessed by the gift of your love. I look around and all I see is your happiness embracing me. Lord I’d be lost, but for the Grace of God.” You see it’s that grace that has delivered me to this point in my life. It’s His grace that will carry me through the rest of it as well. Even if the “other shoe falls”, the blessings run out, luck seems gone and life turns, I have been more blessed than I could have ever imagined. Most of all, I start each day knowing that “but for the grace of God go I…..”
