Count Our Blessings

Next week, I get to write up my 100 blessings for the year, which is one of my most anticipated moments of the year. Decades ago, I began listing 100 reasons to be grateful each year just before Thanksgiving. This year will be no different. I look forward to preparing my list soon.

There is something about counting our blessings that makes us even forget our troubles. Johnson Oatman Jr., a Methodist, wrote the famous hymn “Count Your Blessings.” He wrote thousands of hymns, but this was by far his most popular. The legend is… when the hymn made it to England in the late 19th Century, it swept the Country. “In South London, the men sang it, the boys whistled it, and the women rocked their babies to sleep with this hymn.” (101 Hymn Stories, Kenneth W. Osbeck)

I notice that the words point to life’s struggles and quickly pivot toward the remedy of counting your blessings!

When upon life’s billows you are tempest-tossed,
When you are discouraged thinking all is lost
Count your many blessings name them one by one,
And it will surprise you what the Lord has done.

We have been tempest-tossed in the last twenty months, and we may have been discouraged thinking all is lost. Yet, counting our blessings still works today.

Perhaps you may want to join me this year and list 100 blessings. It may sound difficult, but I encourage you to give it a try. Once you get started listing specific blessings, the list fills up fast! Every year I have done this, I, too, have been surprised what the Lord has done! It works every time! I am looking forward to counting our blessings TOGETHER this Sunday!

Shalom,
Philip