Count Your Blessings

When you got up this morning, how lucky, blessed, or fortunate did you feel? Why do you think you feel the way you do? What are the reasons or circumstances behind your feeling lucky, blessed, or fortunate; or unlucky, cursed, or unfortunate? Each of us can probably come up with our own list of reasons for why we feel the way we do.

When I find myself feeling sorry for myself; if I’m having a frustrating moment or day, I start ticking off circumstances in my head, “I’m not an orphan who has lost his whole family to AIDS or Ebola. I’m not a refugee who has seen family members and friends killed by terrorists and had to flee my home and everything I have and know. I’m not in a refugee camp wondering how I’ll feed my family or myself. I’m not homeless. I’m not being held as a prisoner in a foreign country. I’m not a five-year-old child with cancer.” It isn’t difficult for me to come up with a very long list of why I feel blessed, fortunate, or in the world’s words, “Lucky.”

Some times when our attitude is in a funk and we’re feeling badly about ourselves or life itself it’s because we’re focusing on what we can’t do that we used to or want to or we’re thinking about what we had that we lost rather than what we still possess and can still do.


October 26, 2014
Psalm 36:5-10, Count Your Blessings
Doug Scalise, Brewster Baptist Church


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Like a few of you this week I’ve been watching the World Series and before Game Two Major League baseball honored 29-year-old Pete Frates a former captain of the Boston College baseball team who was diagnosed a few years ago with Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a progressive neurodegenerative disease that affects nerve cells in the brain. Some of you have heard of Pete because he started the ice bucket challenge phenomenon this summer that raised over $115 million dollars for ALS research. Pete couldn’t travel to Kansas City but his parents, brother and sister were recognized and accepted an engraved sterling ice bucket, on Pete’s behalf.

ALS is often referred to as Lou Gehrig’s Disease after the New York Yankees first baseman of the 1920’s and 30’s who remains the greatest first baseman in baseball history. His offensive statistics are staggering[1] yet he is best known for his consecutive game streak of 2,130 games from 1925-1939 (a record that stood until Cal Ripken, Jr. broke it in 1995). He put up Hall of Fame numbers for years despite a broken thumb, a broken toe and back spasms. Later in his career Gehrig’s hands were X-rayed, and doctors were able to spot 17 different fractures that had “healed” while Gehrig continued to play. A few weeks after being diagnosed with ALS, on July 4, 1939, before a sold out Yankee Stadium, Lou Gehrig gave a farewell speech. In it he said, “Fans, for the past two weeks you have been reading about the bad break I got. Yet today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of this earth.”

Lou went on to repeat the phrase, “Sure I’m lucky,” several times recounting how he was treated by the fans, the teammates he got to play with and the managers he played for, the experiences he had and the love and support of his family. He tried to remain hopeful about the future. Lou Gehrig modeled a healthy way of looking at a very difficult situation – he called to mind all the reasons he still had to be thankful and millions of people admired his courage in “considering himself the luckiest man on the face of this earth” in the face of being diagnosed with a terminal disease.

blessings2The Dr. Seuss story, Did I Ever Tell You How Lucky You Are, is also about how we see ourselves and our situations and focusing on being thankful for how lucky we are.

It begins:

“When I was quite young and quite small for my size,

I met an old man in the Desert of Drize.

And he sang me a song I will never forget.

At least, well, I haven’t forgotten it yet.

He sat in a terribly prickly place.

But he sang with a sunny sweet smile on his face:

When you think things are bad, when you feel sour and blue,

When you start to get mad…you should do what I do!

Just tell yourself, Duckie, you’re really quite lucky!

Some people are more more…oh, ever so much more…

Oh, muchly much-much more unlucky than you!

It’s a troublesome world. All the people who’re in it

Are troubled with troubles almost every minute.

You ought to be thankful, a whole heaping lot,

For the places and people you’re lucky you’re not!”

The rest of the book gives examples of people who are much more unlucky in all kinds of crazy situations. If there’s anyone who thinks my quoting Dr. Seuss is a little too childish for a sermon, I’ll give you a quote from one of the most serious intellectually weightiest novelists ever, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, who wrote something similar to Dr. Seuss in one sentence, “Man only likes to count his troubles; he doesn’t calculate his happiness.”

One of the most important things we can do to help us remember how lucky we are is to count our blessings because of our relationship with God. To do this requires having a good understanding of our Creator. One of the many awesome descriptions of God in the Bible is in Psalm 36:5-10. “Your steadfast love, O LORD, extends to the heavens, your faithfulness to the clouds. 6 Your righteousness is like the mighty mountains, your judgments are like the great deep; you save humans and animals alike, O LORD.  7 How precious is your steadfast love, O God! All people may take refuge in the shadow of your wings. 8 They feast on the abundance of your house, and you give them drink from the river of your delights. 9 For with you is the fountain of life; in your light we see light. 10 O continue your steadfast love to those who know you, and your salvation to the upright of heart!”

In the movie Dirty Harry, Clint Eastwood says perhaps his most memorable line in all his films, when he approaches an injured criminal and says, “You’ve got to ask yourself one question. Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya?” When I hear the words of Psalm 36, my answer is, “Yes I do!” Psalm 36 gives many reasons to feel blessed, lucky or fortunate and those reasons aren’t found in our health or our circumstances and that’s critically important to understand and remember because our health and circumstances inevitably change. Our reasons to feel blessed are found in God and who God is and how God regards and treats us. Look at the list in these few verses from Psalm 36.

Three times in these few verses we hear of God’s steadfast love which extends to the heavens in other words it’s everywhere; as far as one can see, God’s steadfast love is present. Verse seven says “How precious is your steadfast love, O God!” Something that is precious like God’s steadfast love is valuable, desirable, and dear to us so verse 10 pleads, “O continue your steadfast love to those who know you.” There is no greater gift in life than to know the God of steadfast of love and that love is never more important than in the changing seasons, circumstances, and conditions in life. Our health may waver, but God’s steadfast love for us never does.

Not only does God’s steadfast love extend to us at all times, verse 6 says God’s “faithfulness” also extends “to the clouds.” God is faithful at all times, even in those moments when we struggle to believe that. God is faithful, reliable, and dependable and we see that in the rhythms God has woven into creation with day and night, the tides, the seasons of the year, the earth orbiting around the sun all in a faithful, predictable way year after year. God is faithful to us and will not leave us or forsake us no matter what. There was an article in Saturday’s Cape Cod Times about a new TV show that I’ll never watch called The Affair. The woman who wrote the program is quoted as saying she thinks a person who is married has only a 20-10% chance of getting through an entire marriage without a spouse being unfaithful. What a sad and cynical way of looking at love and marriage. God’s love is steadfast as is God’s faithfulness and while we’re grateful for those virtues being shared with us, we’re also to put them in action ourselves and to be steadfast in love and faithfulness.

The Psalm continues to praise God. “Your righteousness is like the mighty mountains, your judgments are like the great deep; you save humans and animals alike, O LORD.” This is a way of saying that God is holy, good, and just and that God’s care and concern extends beyond people to all living things. God is a source of blessing and refuge when we need the Lord the most. Listen to how all our senses are engaged in verses 8-9: “They feast on the abundance of your house, and you give them drink from the river of your delights. 9 For with you is the fountain of life; in your light we see light.” Feasting, eating, drinking from the river of your delights. With God is the fountain of life – bubbling up with energy. In God’s light we see the way things truly are. How blessed we are to have a God like our God: a God of steadfast love, faithfulness, righteousness, and justice; a God in whom all people may take refuge and who saves human and animal alike. A God of abundant, ravishing beauty with rivers of delight and the fountain of life, who provides for us and who lights up our darkness. Why wouldn’t a person want to believe in and be in relationship with a God like that? Why wouldn’t you?

Earlier I said that on one level being thankful or feeling lucky that we’re not someone else or in even worse circumstances than we currently are can help to reframe or readjust our attitude or perspective. However, it isn’t the long term way to live with an attitude of gratitude of thanksgiving. We also want to be careful in looking at someone else because we may be wrong in our assessment of someone else’s situation or our own. We may think we’re much better off than someone else and in the eyes of God, we may not be! For example, Luke 18:9-14 says Jesus, “also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt: 10 “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. 11 The Pharisee, standing by himself, was praying thus, ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. 12 I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.’ 13 But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even look up to heaven, but was beating his breast and saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’ 14 I tell you, this man went down to his home justified rather than the other; for all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted.”

In this parable, Jesus makes it clear that an attitude of “God, I thank you that I am not like other people” is not the best path to spiritual contentment and maturity. Just feeling lucky we’re not someone else is not sufficient or satisfying as an approach to life. If we’ve been fortunate to learn about and know the amazing God described in Psalm 36 who we worship, love, and serve, then we’re blessed, we’re truly lucky. We also want others to know God so they’ll realize – regardless of their physical condition or life circumstances – how lucky they are too. Where we put our focus and attention really matters and truly shapes our attitude, perspective, and the life we have. If you want a picture of what it looks like when our trust and focus are not on God, Jeremiah 2:11-13 gives us one. In these verses God speaks through the prophet with great heartache and disappointment in the people. “Has a nation changed its gods, even though they are no gods? But my people have changed their glory for something that does not profit.12 Be appalled, O heavens, at this, be shocked, be utterly desolate, says the LORD, 13 for my people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the fountain of living water, and dug out cisterns for themselves, cracked cisterns that can hold no water.”

Here we see the similar image from Psalm 36:8-9 of “the fountain of living water,” yet sadly, the people have forsaken that for what God calls basically cracked pots that can’t hold water; that can’t sustain the people. This is often what we do, we turn from God whether through ignorance, neglect, or a lack of love and commitment on our part for cracked pots that can’t hold water and our love, hope, and faith “leak” as a result and we soon find ourselves feeling empty. What a contrast that is to feasting on the abundance of God’s house, and drinking from the river of Gods delights. Why would we give that up for anything else that will never be as satisfying? Thankfully, God always welcomes us back when we realize we’ve messed up and missed out on all God desires for us.

Did I Ever Tell You How Lucky You Are concludes, “And, speaking of plants, you should be greatly glad-ish you’re not Farmer Falkenberg’s seventeenth radish (which is about to be eaten by a worm). And you’re so, so So lucky you’re not a left sock, left behind by mistake in the Kaverns of Krock!

Thank goodness for all of the things you are not! Thank goodness you’re not something someone forgot, and left all alone in some punkerish place like a rusty tin coat hanger hanging in space.

That’s why I say, “Duckie! Don’t grumble! Don’t stew! Some critters are much-much, oh, ever so much-much, so muchly much much more unlucky than you!”

The good news of God is that you’re not something or someone that has been forgotten. The God of steadfast love and faithfulness still remembers and knows you and you can know the Lord and that is really lucky.

 

 

Questions for Discussion or Reflection  Count Your Blessings  Psalm 36:5-10

1.    How lucky, blessed, or fortunate do you feel today? Why do you think you feel the way you do? What are the reasons or circumstances behind feeling lucky and blessed or unlucky, cursed, or unfortunate?

2.    In the Dr. Seuss story, Do You Know How Lucky You Are, the main character is encouraged to think about how lucky he is that he isn’t in situations and circumstances far worse than his own. Do you ever think about how much better your life circumstances are than other people’s lives? What comes to mind when you think about these things?

3.    Psalm 36:5-10 describes many characteristics of God, how many can you identify (for example, Faithfulness is one)?

4.    How “lucky” are we because of who God is and what God does for us?

5.    How do the character of God and the actions of God on our behalf impact our perspective? Our attitude? Our sense of gratitude or thankfulness?

6.    If you were to “count your blessings” what would be on your list? How long would it be? Consider giving this a try!

 

 

[1] Batting .340 with 493 home runs and teaming with Babe Ruth as the greatest 1-2 punch ever. Had 13 consecutive seasons with 100 runs and 100 RBI, averaging 139 runs and 148 RBI. Set an AL record with 184 RBI in 1931. Three of the top six RBI seasons in history belong to Gehrig. Won six World Series (hitting .361 with 10 homers). Hit 23 career grand slams.

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