“Count Your Blessings, Name Them One by One” by Pastor Jim Buckman
Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
I pray you and yours are well.
Johnson Oatman, Jr. grew up in New Jersey in the middle of the 19th Century singing hymns with his father. Johnson grew up to become a bi-vocational Methodist minister and he wrote over 5,000 hymns, one was Count Your Blessings in 1897.
Another writer said about Count Your Blessings, “It is like a beam of sunlight that has brightened up the dark places of the earth.” Early on it was especially popular in Great Britain, where it was said, “The men sing it, the boys whistle it, and the women rock their babies to sleep on this hymn.” During the revival in Wales it was one of the hymns sung at every service.
Refrain:
Count your blessings, name them one by one,
Count your blessings, see what God hath done!
Count your blessings, name them one by one,
Count your many blessings, see what God hath done.
When we count our blessings, we are not discounting the difficulties we face. And, it is more than “grinning and bearing it”. Counting our blessings is giving God the thanks and glory that He deserves. Counting our blessings trains our minds to focus on God and His grace, even and especially in the pains of this fallen world.
Giving thanks is difficult when we have not been thanked. Jesus knows your pain. Only one leper came back to thank Him, after He had healed ten (Luke 17:11-19). It was only a single prostitute who showed appreciation to Jesus for the forgiveness which He offered to all who were at Simon the Pharisee’s party (Luke 7:36-50).
An old preacher said that one time God sent out two Angels to collect prayers; one was sent to collect requests, and the other was sent to collect prayers of thanks. You can guess which came back with the most. God is blessing us at Faith Lutheran Church! We praise God from Whom all blessings flow! Amen?
Very respectfully,
Pastor Jim