Counting Blessings

This morning we will have the stewardship breakfast/service where we combine both of the services together on a theme of Counting Blessings. I don't think I will be saying anything because we have the chair of the committee and a committed layperson. But if I were to speak I would probably say something like:

Today we bless the food that we have collected for the food bank before we have breakfast as a reminder that we have received so many blessing that we need to share our blessings with others. We have received  membership in this community of faith as a gift - nobody had to earn membership - it was a gift. Some members of this congregation have paid for this meal to be catered- so breakfast is a gift from them- you did not have to earn it. It seems only appropriate that in our abundance we ought share some of this bounty with others who do not belong to this church who are in need.

We live in a universe of gifts and blessings and how do we respond? I think the only way we can faithfully respond is to give blessings and gifts. I was lucky in that I have had some friends come and visit us  this weekend- friends I have known for several decades and in all those years I have received more blessings than I can count from them. It was my honor to give them blessings in return. As part of the return of blessings we took them out to dinner last night but that sucker arranged to have the check presented to him. Try as I might I can never seem to get even with him.

After dinner we went to a concert at the Outer banks Forum for the Lively Arts  by Emile Pandolfi, a wonderful pianist who filled his musical interpretations with an energetic joy that was infectious.  He also added some patter, including one joke as he was drinking from a glass of water: "An optimist says that the glass is half full, a pessimist says that the glass is half empty and the management consultant says that you have 50% more glass than you need."

Purists would say that Pandolfi included "too many notes and banged the piano too much" but I was reminded of a man who wanted to share the blessings he had received. It was a lot of hard work. He said as an introduction to Chopin's Fantasie impromptu, Op 66, "Chopin called it an improvisation but I have spent thousands of hours learning it."

 Learning how to return blessings is a lot of hard work.  My abundant ego seems naturally inclined to streaks of bitterness when things don't go my own way. I want to hold on to hold on to the line from Voltaire's line from his poem On the Lisbon Disaster 

When the earth gapes my body to entomb,
I justly may complain of such a doom.

 

The world seems an especially hard place when your own ego is the center. The hard work is to see the world as a place of blessings each day. Our fellow parishioner, Tia Edwards, writes a blog, Finding God Each Day, which is her discipline to find something each day that reminds her about God. They are simple things like a spider's web, to a new recipe , to a beach walk, to a husband's loving comment, to a word uttered by a friend during a rough time. They are all blessings and she shares these blessings each day. I start off every morning with a check on what she found the previous day as part of my discipline to give thanks.

Stewardship is about giving thanks. While I think that the budget needs money to pay for buildings, staff and resources, that is not the point of stewardship. I spend hours writing sermons, and doing all sorts of Priestly functions and while I love rites, ceremonies and music, I think the the main mission of any church is called to count and share blessings.

I give to the church and to the larger community because I have been given much and it is my discipline to give in return to all the uncountable blessings.Try as I might I never seem to get even with God.