Wednesday, June 14, 2023

day no. 16,305: counting curses and forgetting blessings

Malachi 2:2
If ye will not hear, and if ye will not lay it to heart, to give glory unto my name, saith the LORD of hosts, I will even send a curse upon you, and I will curse your blessings

It is always easier and more intuitive to count your curses and to forget your blessings. Because works righteousness is so embedded into us, we immediately recognize when we've been short-changed and often overlook when we've received more than we owed. We not only count our curses, but we count on them. We count on them being an adequate disinfectant for all of our accumulated sins. It is easier to justify yourself by your mistreatment than by your merit. It is easier to find examples of being burdened than it is of being blessed. We can count our blessings, if we try real hard. But even then, we prefer to do it only once a year and mostly for things which we are at that very moment taking for granted.

"When it comes to life, the critical thing is whether you take things for granted or take them with gratitude." -- G.K. Chesterton

When you refuse to count your blessings as blessings, you turn them into curses. You call deep heaven down upon yourself. You take mercy and make it miserable. When we make a regular habit of forgetting our blessings and the One from whom all blessings flow along with them, we are converting our present blessings into burdens. We are making disgruntled disciples of divine favors. We catechize our comforts to become cancers. We make a mess of the blessings we have and backfill the well of fresh mercies.

"Every high civilization decays by forgetting obvious things." -- G.K. Chesterton

When we look down on what we've received from above, there's nowhere left to look. We cut ourselves off from the source of life and spoil the life we've already bottled up. Like bread from heaven, it can go bad when abused. 

Count your blessings, not your curses. Remember your blessings and forgive those who've cursed you. They only know the half of it after all. 

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