Tuesday, September 15, 2015

Hard Blessings

September 15, 2015

Sometimes blessings can be hard to receive simply because they are so rich and so undeserved. After breakfast with my friend Willie, I headed over to physical therapy for work on my foot, which is much better, thanks to the skilled folks there. While going through the program, I look around me and see people younger than me dealing with much more serious ailments. Then I grabbed a couple cups of coffee from Tim's and drove over to the nursing home to visit my friend Rick, who is also younger by at least a couple years. A stroke during heart surgery left him pretty much paralyzed on his right side and unable to talk. After visiting with him for an hour, I stopped by another friend's house. John, not yet 30, has had two surgeries for torn rotator cuff, and isn't sure when he'll be able to return to work.

When I got home, I read and prayed, worked on the entry room step, fixing the trim that buckled in the humidity, took the loader off the tractor, had dinner with my wife, then took Ian and Eliza to her school open house on the bike, before returning home to pick up four five-gallon bucket of pinecones and have coffee on the back deck. All this while some good friends are going through a terrible situation for which I am powerless to do anything to help other than pray and offer our home and our hearts for respite.

Linda and I have gone through our tough times, but it seems to me that we've had fewer of them than most people, and therein lies the rub. To be blessed as we are is wonderful, but it often seems unfair. Why should we receive so much while others struggle so hard? It's a question for which I have no answer other than that given in the Scripture, that God gives as he sees fit, but to whom much is given, much shall be required. Along with my gratitude for my blessings, I offer my prayers to receive them graciously, guard them carefully, and pass them on generously.

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