Counting Your Blessings
By George “Chip” Hammond
For many years, my family has kept a Blessings Jar. Whenever we experience God’s goodness to us – a special act of providence, an answer to prayer, or some good news – one of us writes it down, folds the paper and puts it in the jar. At dinner on January 1 of the following year we pass the jar around, and one by one take out blessings and read them, and we reflect on God’s goodness to us all throughout the previous year.
It’s become an important tradition for us. We can so easily forget God’s goodness to us, and our Blessing Jar provides a concrete reminder of God’s presence, goodness, and kind care throughout the year.
The other day I was struck by a particular instance God’s of goodness, so I wrote it down to put in the jar. As I did so my eye fell on another slip I had written quite a while ago that was slightly opened and was visible. The situation I had recorded as a blessing then had changed and had changed in a way that was not pleasant. If fact, the situation brought added complexity and difficulty into our lives. The thought immediately jumped to my mind, “I should take that out of there.”
But I paused and asked myself why I was inclined to take it out. I considered that since the situation had changed, if we read it on New Year’s Day we would be reminded of the “blessing that wasn’t,” and it might prove discouraging. Taking it out would save embarrassment – perhaps embarrassing God for praising him for something he had withheld, or perhaps embarrassment to ourselves for thinking God had blessed us in a way that, as it turns out, he had not.
This line of thought prompted me to ask another question: What is the shelf-life of a blessing?” In other words, how long does a blessing have to last to be considered a viable blessing? Ten years? Ten weeks? Ten days? Ten hours? Ten minutes? What is the cut-off at which we should say, “Oh, I thought God was blessing me with that, but it turns out he was not”?
The blessing in question was an answer to prayer. A tremendous answer to prayer. Or so we thought. But it lasted only a few months and then we were essentially back to the same situation that prompted the prayer for relief in the first place. It’s not that we were mistaken. The situation really had changed. It’s just that the change didn’t last long, so was it really a blessing?
I began to think about the fact that we are creatures of time. God created the world, as Augustine said, not in time, but with time. The flow of time is a part of the creation, the environment and realm in which we live, just as much as matter, energy, space, love and reason are woven into the creation.
When the Son of God came into the world, he entered time. He was here in this creation and as a part it for three years. He brought blessing and he was a blessing while he walked among us. But that was for three years, more than two-thousand years ago. Given how short a span of time that event was, is it still a blessing? Or does the relatively short span of time make it less of a blessing, or not one at all?
The answer to our prayer (a changed situation) lasted for about six months. It was a blessing at the time. Is it less of one because the situation changed back to what it was? A beloved mother develops cancer, her children pray for her and she is astonishingly healed. A year and a half later she contracts the Coronavirus, develops Covid-19 and dies as a result. Does her sickness and death from Covid nullify and void the blessing of the answer to prayer for her cancer?
Lazarus is raised from the dead, an unbelievable blessing! (See John 11 for the story.) We know nothing about him after that, but if he was about the age of Jesus and he lived out the rest of a normal life span, he lived for probably another forty to fifty more years. Is it the fifty years that makes it a blessing? What if he died six months after Jesus’ crucifixion? Would six months be enough time to still consider it a blessing?
I concluded that blessings don’t have a shelf life. Blessings are real blessings, regardless of how long they last. There is not a shelf life on the event that negates it as a blessing.
All gifts from God, no matter how long or short lived, should be received as blessings and with thanksgiving. That they are “short” as we count shortness does not negate their goodness. They are real, tangible, and given by God, and thus are praiseworthy, regardless of how long they last.
Just as all good things God sends into our lives are blessings, regardless how short the duration, all the real, good, praiseworthy, and to-be-received-with-gratitude blessings of this life are temporary, even if they remain for years. Every blessing, every answer to prayer has a shelf-life that at most will be measured in decades.
This fact does not make these “lesser” blessings. They are not blessings of no meaning or account, otherwise God would not tell us to ask him for them (e.g. our daily bread lasts for a day). But all these blessings take on their most significant meaning when we see them as harbingers of blessings and beacons calling us to Christ, for all blessings in him last forever. All the blessings of this life, no matter how short-lived, are tastes of the goodness of God that will never end for those who trust in him as he has come to us to reconcile us to God.
So trust in Christ, and do not despise any of God’s blessings, dismissing them as “short-lived” or “of no matter” simply because they are short. Count them all. Let them remind you of the God who promises to bless you forever, and don’t forget any of his benefits (Psalm 103:2). Keep all the blessing in the jar. Don’t remove any of them.
