The Blessings that Got Me Home

I often consider the blessings I have, particularly in the context that other people don't have those blessings. For example, I missed a train the other day, the one that would have gotten me to the bus I wanted to catch. I could easily have waited for the next train, and gotten on the next bus more than an hour later, and that would have been fine, but I knew that taking that route would get me home much later than I wanted, so I called my mom for a ride.

There are multiple layers of blessings there. I have a cell phone. I have a transit pass. I live in a country where public transit exists and is safe and usually reliable. I have a family I can count on to help me when they can. We have a car. We have a safe, comfortable home. I didn't have responsibilities that would have made it important for me to catch the earlier train. I felt safe waiting either for the following train or for my mom to pick me up. And, since Mom did pick me up, I got home an hour earlier than I thought I might.

Most of those blessings stem from living in a developed country in a city without too much crime. Some of them stem from being relatively well off. One of them, feeling safe, stems from being either naive or male. Almost all of them stem from forces that were or were almost entirely out of my control.

God gives everyone blessings. It may be fair to say that He gives some people more and/or better blessings than others, but all of us have blessings that other people don't have. I'm not sure what I should do with or about these blessings, but I figure that, at the very least, I should acknowledge them, be thankful for them, and recognize that there are other people who weren't born as lucky. We all have blessings that other people don't have. Sometimes we can share them, and other times we can't, but we should always acknowledge them and be thankful for them. It's too easy to become spoiled and to take everyday blessings for granted, but not everyone has the blessings that we consider "everyday" blessings, so we should at least be thankful for the blessings we enjoy every day.