Blessed

Blessed is everyone who is in awe of Lord Jehovah and walks in His steps! Psalm 128:1 Aramaic Bible in Simple English

I am so very blessed.

Yes, I am even grateful for the eight days of stomach virus. Truly the end product of that week of writhing is gratitude.

Yesterday I read a conversation, deemed by The Washington Post to be the best television conversation of 2019, between Stephen Colbert and Anderson Cooper about grief and suffering and gratitude.

“It’s a gift to exist, and with existence comes suffering. There’s no escaping that.”

“I don’t want it to have happened,” Colbert clarified. “I want it to not have happened, but if you are grateful for your life, then you have to be grateful for all of it. You can’t pick and choose what you’re grateful for.”

Colbert continued: “So, what do you get from loss? You get awareness of other people’s loss, which allows you to connect with that other person, which allows you to love more deeply and to understand what it’s like to be a human being, if it’s true that all humans suffer.”

And I have a tiny humble understanding that my loss and discomfort is ever so minor on a global perspective, and I am reminded of that on a daily basis as migrants crowded together on old church pews tear up through my welcoming confession that we cannot even begin to grasp the pain and destruction and difficulties they have been walking through.

Ah yes the fires.

I have also been listening to and re-listening to Ryanhood’s “I Will Always Love You”:

No need to be so confused by all the fires you have to walk through
Cause they’re breaking you
And making you
And building you to be
Soft enough to love the least of these
Even Me

And my 10,000 Gifts Gratitude List churns forward through the sweet presence of beloved beings and piercingly good words of hope and shimmering light bouncing off the now-snow-capped Catalinas and possibly even train whistles in the not-so-far-distance.

My cup runneth over.

And may this cup be offered to each of the least of these today, and every day in this new year, making eye contact with the pain and destruction and difficulties, with tender gratitude and renewed resolution to walk alongside LORD Jehovah in His Kingdom work of restoration.

Hallowed be Thy Name.

Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.

One cannot even begin to grasp the potency of this prayer, joining hearts around the world throughout all generations.

For Thine is the Kingdom and the Power and the Glory forever and ever,

Amen.