Looking back at the reasons to be thankful
Mom’s Corner
Happy belated Thanks-giving! As I began to think about the article for this week, I also began to think of things that had happened over the last year and how much I have to be thankful for.
In some ways it has been a difficult year in the Blaylock house. We weathered the loss of employment and all the emotional upsets included. We’ve weathered some difficult teenage moments. We’ve also weathered my Mom having surgery and her recovery.
However, as always, our Heavenly Father has been there.
He provided and continues to provide an awesome church family, terrific friends, a wonderful husband, super kids, a home, all the food we need, clothes, necessary medical care, and the list goes on and on.
He has given us what we needed, not necessarily wanted, but what we needed.
I think we, as Americans, forget how much we truly have to be thankful for, because we are constantly inundated by things we supposedly need from TV, radio, and billboards.
I got tickled at my best friend’s four-year-old daughter last week.
We were watching TV and an infomercial came on selling something.
At the end of commercial the announcer said something like, “Order this right now for only $19.99 and we’ll send you a second one at no charge!”
My friend’s daughter pipes up with, “Mommy, we need this right now! We need to order it!”
We both laughed at her parroting the commercial. However, it made me think about how our children are constantly bombarded by this type of information.
As Americans there are many things for which we have to be thankful.
For example, one of the most basic needs for human life is clean water. Approximately 1.5 billion people in the world today do not have access to clean water and 4.5 million have died this year due to water related illnesses.
Sadly, a child dies every 20 seconds due to an unclean water related illness. Feel blessed yet?
OK, how about this one? According to water.org, an American taking a five minute shower uses more water than a typical person in a developing country gets for an entire day.
Here’s another statistic that made me feel very thankful: about 1.3 billion people, roughly one in 4, live on less than $1 per day. Think of it like this: a family of four lives on approximately $28 dollars a week! Here are some more facts from globalissues.org that I think will make you feel very blessed:
Out of the 2.2 billion children worldwide 640 million do not have adequate shelter, 270 million have no access to health services and 121 million do not get any type of education services.
Due to the lack of immunizations, 2.2 million children die each year from preventable diseases.
790 million people are undernourished.
2.6 billion people live without sanitation (i.e. toilets!).
1.6 billion people live without electricity.
925 million people in the world suffer from hunger.
18 million people died in 2002 due to diseases, lack of pre-natal care, and nutritional deficiencies.
Information like this makes me feel very blessed to live in the United States.
Many of the people represented by these statistics live much like the pilgrims or pioneers of our history.
Many people wash their clothes in the same stream where they gather their water.
I want to encourage you this Thanksgiving season to be truly thankful.
I know it is very easy to rush over Thanksgiving in an effort to get ready for Christmas.
Although, I don’t decorate for Thanksgiving and I admit I can barely wait to start putting up Christmas decorations, I am, nevertheless, very thankful for all the blessings I have been given in my life.
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