Let's Put a Moratorium on "I'm Blessed."

   

Maybe this is just a hang-up of mine but I get weary when people say, “I’m so blessed.” Or  “I’m blessed.”  It always sounds self-righteous to me. I always feel like I' m hearing: "I'm blessed...I don't know about you." What about all those people who don’t feel blessed—has God turned God’s back on them?  I think about all those folk hanging on by their fingernails. All those battling crippling scary diseases. All those soldiers who came back from Iraq and Afghanistan all broken, suicidal—to families who don’t know what to do. The folk that want to just pull the covers up and stay in bed. Life gets messy. Not everybody has a blessed day.

Maybe we ought to say, “We’re grateful.” This puts some accountability on our backs—not God’s. We’ve all got something to be grateful for if we think long enough. Thinking really is thanking. Even people on hospital beds or those facing life-threatening situations. Doctors and nurses who do the dirty work without complaining. Family members that just keep up their faithfulness. Prayers from people all over who keep us going. And yes—God whose grace comes in their tiniest and most substantial of ways and never leaves and never forsakes. Even when we don’t know this is working.

On second thought let’s put a moratorium on,  “I’m blessed” and say instead, “Everybody is blessed.” Everybody. Every body.