musings,09/01/10, Everyone's Blessings, by John

Some people think God only blesses those who trust Jesus for salvation, but that is completely untrue. Every good thing in this world comes from God whether we believe in and worship him or not. We seem to prefer to give the credit somewhere else. We give Bell the credit for the telephone. Edison gets the credit for incandescent lighting. Fulton got credit for the steam engine, and the list goes on and on.

Inventors work hard to accomplish their goals, and they certainly deserve credit, but all inventions use God's created materials. I am also pretty sure there is no good thing on this earth that didn't have a prototype in heaven, or perhaps only in the mind of God. I believe we should look about us at God's blessings even before we begin to invent. That might keep us from using His materials for purposes He did not intend. TNT might be a good example of that, and so might atomic energy. It is good, but it is so frequently used for evil purposes.

The reason I am so aware of God's blessings lies in my long past childhood. At a very young age, God blessed me with a diverse environment. A few steps from my back door, I could view terrapins, alligator snapping turtles, mud turtles, and blue-tailed skink lizards. I also saw toads and bullfrogs and their tadpoles. At the same time, I rejoiced watching red-tailed hawks gliding high up in the sky. Occasionally a four-lined garter snake slithered through our garden and once in a while a long, thin, bright green grass snake slipped along the willow branches. Mockingbirds, blue jays, brown thrush, and catbirds filled the hedges and apple trees in our garden. In the more open area beyond our house, I watched loggerhead shrikes pin grasshoppers to thorns on a black locust tree. The live oaks and pin oaks lining our front yard and the street held scanty nests of mourning doves, and just once I discovered a whip-poor-will on an oak his tail held flat against the limb and pointed toward the bole of the tree. His head turned upward. He was almost invisible. If his large dark eyes had not been open, I would have missed seeing him because he looked so much like the stub of a broken limb. All these things and many more too numerous to mention here were within 150 yards of the house where I was born. I didn't mention, for instance, the earthworms, centipedes, millipedes, the roller-bugs, black widow spiders, daddy long legs, and myriads of other multi-legged critters. Once after a big rain, I scooped up from the water next to the curb a large black snaky looking thing. It caught my attention because it constantly changed shape. My next-door neighbor was the head of the Natural Science Dept. at Delta State College. I took it to him, and he held the pint jar up to the light and identified my catch as a leech. I was probably five at the time and had never seen one before.
All of these things, many of which may sound icky to you, were God's blessings to me. I learned to appreciate the world by observation, and my family members taught me scientific as well as common names for God's critters. I learned to respect our environment. I tried to learn how they fed themselves, how they reproduced, and always wondered why God put them here. At that time, it didn't occur to me that Mosquitoes bore small amounts of various microscopic life forms such as malaria. I think those bugs may have helped the human race develop its immune system.

A lot of the time, I lived in a wonderful make-believe world where Tarzan ruled the jungle that lay behind our home. At other times, I traveled with Indians, and perhaps once or twice with Lewis and Clarke. Of course, it's hard to conjure up a mountain lion from a house cat. It was easier to see a bird dog as a wolf, and little green snakes could become huge Boa Constrictors in my imagination. God gave that ability to all of us, and it provides a wonderful, exciting world for a child. I could imagine a rail-runner lizard as a crocodile, but reality told me they never get near water unless forced when fleeing predators!

All these things took place in just one residential block in a small Mississippi town during the Great Depression, a town named after president Grover Cleveland. I never had time to be bored, and I didn't know a lot about blessings, but I certainly had a wonderful childhood!

I haven't found a promise guaranteeing happiness in the Bible, but I know now that God has given us everything we need to be happy. Some translate the Hebrew in Psalm 1 to say, "Happy is the man...." It is a statement of a person's being, not a promise. The same thing is true in the Beatitudes. Hapiness does not always result from living in God's blessing. I doubt that even Jesus was "happy" hanging in excruciating pain on the cross, and I doubt any of us is happy when we suffer even if it is for a good reason.

Joy on the other hand, is the second gift listed in Galatians 5:22,23 given to all of us who trust Jesus and live with Him. That passage says, "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness.

Against such things there is no law." Joy overrides almost everything else that keeps us from being happy, doesn't it? Personally, even when I am in pain, God's creation sustaining itself all around me gives me joy filled with the peace He also gives. Politicians and their promises come and go in time, but God's good gifts remain, and so many of them are for all of us believers and unbelievers alike. In fact, I would think any thoughtful person would look at creation and say, "There must be a God behind all of this. I think I will seek Him!" And one of His promises is that you will find Him if you truly seek Him! The right way to do it is in Matthew 7:7,8; "Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened."