We’ve all said, “It hit me like a ton of bricks.” Invariably the realization that hit us like a ton of bricks was not something to be grateful for.  When the doctor said, “it’s cancer.”  When your unmarried teen daughter said, “I’m pregnant.”  When the V.P of operations called everyone into the break room and said, “Your division is being moved to Bangalore, India, here’s your severance check,” we somehow referenced that moment as heavy.  We’ve all felt the weight of the bad descend on our souls.

For those of us who have determined to live a life of gratitude, we automatically have a dilemma.   The negative is heavy.  Bad news may travel fast but that’s not because it weighs less.   Bad news travels fast because it makes a deeper impression on our minds than good news.  Pain screams bloody murder when it hits.  Comfort just sighs contentedly.  Bad news and actions blow through like a tornado; good news and deeds like a warm summer breeze.  The blessings of God don’t “knock us for a loop,” or “hit us like ton of breaks.”   Life’s favors are more likely to elicit a smile instead of a swear.  You get my point.

A schoolteacher can have 20 students that behave like great little scholars all day, but the three irreverent revilers who are earning a graduate degree in classroom sabotage convince her to take early retirement.   You can’t always prevent the “hit me like a ton of bricks” moment but you can start counting the less weighty but enumerable and more impactful blessings that visit your life everyday.

Yes you read me correctly.  The good and favorable is more numerous and ultimately more impactful than the emotionally heavy bad fortune we all experience. I have cultivated a habit of writing my thanks every day and it always outnumbers my petitions.  It takes some discipline to properly assign value to the goodness of God but it’s a habit worth cultivating.   Every day of your life will give you a dozen things to smile about and you’ll probably not have even a half a dozen happenings a year that hit you like a “ton of bricks.”  Yes, I know stuff like unemployment, insensitive ex-spouses and kids in trouble are game changers and the steady love of a friend or a child isn’t, but love outlasts trials.  So in the end the weightier stuff may not really be the most significant stuff?

As many of you know, my brother-in-law Steve has pancreatic cancer.  The other day he collapsed at a Panera Bread in Phillipburg, N. J. and ended up in ICU there.  Cheri and I rushed down there with other members of the family.  Ten minutes from the hospital in one direction was a pastor that I was acqauinted with who pastored down the road in Massachusetts for 13 years.  We parked our RV at his church.  We got a call from Doreen Campbell, a beloved former member offering the rest of the family, her brothers-in-law house, who was in Florida.  His house was also about ten minutes from the hospital.  I am only speaking for myself now, but I honestly enjoyed the intense and uninterrupted hours of conversation that we never get to have at home because everybody is up to their eyeballs in projects. Also in the end we found a benevolent organization that flew Steve to Boston for a reduced rate.  Things are still serious with him but he is blessed. Hey cancer is heavy but so is hospitality, fellowship and favor. (Somebody walked into the church last night and handed me a $500.00 check to help with expenses.)

I don’t know about you but I am positive that at the end of my life blessing will outweigh the bad.  I am absolutely certain that the delightful days will dominate the dark days.   Emily Dickinson wrote a poem entitled, “Hope is a thing with feathers.”  The first stanza goes, ““Hope is the thing with feathers -That perches in the soul – And sings the tune without the words – And never stops – at all.”

Johnson Oatman Jr. wrote, “When upon life’s billows you are tempest-tossed,
 When you are discouraged, thinking all is lost. Count your many blessings, name them one by one, 
And it will surprise you what the Lord hath done.”

Scripture says, “Give thanks to the LORD, call on his name; make known among the nations what he has done. Sing to him, sing praise to him; tell of all his wonderful acts.” 1 Chronicles 16:8-9  also predicts with accuracy, “One generation will commend your works to another; they will tell of your mighty acts. Psalm 145:4”

Next Thursday is Thanksgiving Day in America.   Do yourself a favor.  Starting on Thanksgiving Day 2013, begin the habit of collecting the feathers of gratitude and fill your mind with the weight of God’s glory.   If you will do this you will be a lot better prepared the next time some bad news hits you “like ton of bricks.”