Counting The Right Blessings

This 16th century work by Jacopo Bassano portrays a well to do
family ignoring the plight of a desperately poor Lazarus.

At Thanksgiving we are often encouraged to list all of the blessings we enjoy, including such material blessings as plentiful food, comfortable homes, expansive wardrobes and all the many conveniences we take for granted. 

I totally agree that we're to be grateful for every good gift “that comes from above,” granted us by an incredibly gracious God. But it’s hard to find any examples of lists of material things to thank God for in the Bible. In other words, there’s no mention of Jacob thanking God for all the sheep and cattle he’d gained while in the employ of his relative Laban, or of Joseph thanking God for his many colored coat, or of Solomon gratefully listing such “blessings” as his having a lavish palace (twice the size of the temple he built), and for his 700 wives and 300 concubines. 

Nor can we imagine Jesus telling a story about a rich man thanking God for being able to “fare sumptuously every day,” unlike the desperately poor Lazarus who lived on whatever table scraps the privileged man had left over.

Bottom line, none of our things are really ours. We’re just tenants placed on God’s earth with the responsibility of taking care of and distributing them in the way God intended. “The earth is the Lord’s,” we are told. We are simply to till, take care of, enjoy and share the fruits of the earth as God’s tenant farmers and caretakers. 

We also need to remember that most of what we have on our tables is the result of oppressed farm workers all over the world harvesting, processing, packaging and transporting our food for a fraction of the pay to which we have come to feel entitled.

So let’s be careful about thanking God that we’re not like the millions of people who are underpaid to make it possible for us to enjoy the wealth what we do, or who go to bed hungry every night while we indulge in the kinds of daily feasts that are contributing to obesity and other health problems. 

There is precedent in the Bible for having occasional celebratory feasts, but when we do have them, let’s be sure to also invite Jesus, Lazarus and some of their needy friends to join us at one table that reaches around the world.