Can’t sleep? Try counting your blessings.
-- Author Unknown

Not that counting your blessings would put you to sleep. As a matter of fact, you may find yourself getting up from the bed to do a halleluiah dance!

First, that you have a bed to lay your head in is a blessing in itself. The National Coalition for the Homeless estimates that there are more than three million homeless people in America, people who have no restful or personal bed of their own. And the borrowed and provisional beds or pallets they have don’t live in a warm and comfortable home. Your bed is housed in a home that is your own, surrounded by other stuff that’s yours too. You may be renting or your mortgage may be sky high, you may even feel you’re a paycheck close to making a pallet on the street for yourself, but right now, you have a place to call home and lie in a bed that’s all yours. Count those blessings.

What about the meal you ate for dinner. It may have been from the greasy fast food joint down the street; it may have been leftovers; it may have been gourmet. Whatever it was, you had a meal that many didn’t have. According to America’s Second Harvest, the nation’s food bank network, in 2005, 35.1 million Americans lived in food insecure, or hungry, households. And you, unlike many of these people, don’t have to choose between a meal and other necessities like rent, mortgage, medicine, or medical care. You make enough money and have enough insurance to cover those costs. Count all those blessings. And, by the way, did you wait awhile, at least 2 hours, before you ate and went to bed? You know undigested food will wrap around you like gauze and strip you of some of your blessings very quickly, right?

And, speaking of making enough money, you do, don’t you? Okay, at least enough to handle the necessities, maybe even buy and save a little extra. You have a job, maybe it’s the one you want, maybe it’s less than to be desired. Nonetheless you have income. Count the fact that you have choices – you can choose to stay at your present job or you can find a new one, possibly create your own job. And you can do that because you have the skills and knowledge you need to find the information and resources to make that happen. As a matter of fact, you have blueprints of an idea that could work if you would take it off the paper and go with it. The fact is you have options that make never being penniless feasible for the rest of your life. Wow, count that blessing!

Most importantly, count the fact that you have life a blessing, and that with this life you can do anything you desire. Anything! You can climb a mountain. You can teach a kid. You can clothe a nation. You can sing butt naked in the park on a sunny afternoon. You may be stared at, chased, or arrested but you can do it if you want to. You can do whatever you want. And by now, you’ve counted so many blessings, those named here and those between the lines, that you’re either sleepy from thinking, tired from all the energy you expended in your prayer dance, or Jesus has stroked you to sleep in preparation for another day of blessings to come. Whatever your state, you’ve been blessed. Go ahead and sleep now.

Sadiqqa © 2007