Counting Our Blessings

A person I knew died at the age of around 45. When I first met him, he appeared to be robust and healthy. Later, he was diagnosed with cancer. Despite taking treatment, his illness mounted. Towards the end of his life he had become a virtual skeleton. His digestive system had been so badly affected that he couldn’t eat even simple food. Even drinking water had become very difficult. When someone would come to meet him in his sickness, he would say, “Don’t think about me. Rather, think about yourself. Be thankful that you have a healthy body. You can eat and drink and walk. All this is a blessing from God. If God wants, He can take away these blessings, and then you will have nothing.”

Most people are blessed with a healthy body at birth. But they take this for granted. Rarely do they recognize that their healthy body is entirely a gift from God. Seldom do they think that they should bow before God in acknowledgment of this gift.

Likewise, as long as a person is alive, he thinks that this life will remain forever. Rarely, if ever, does he think about the reality of his death, which is sure to happen one day or the other. This is, without a shadow of doubt, the biggest mistake.

A person who is aware of this reality constantly remembers that one day he has to die and meet his Maker. He recognizes that everything that he has been given is as a gift from the Lord of the worlds. It is such a person who will be successful in the test that human beings are being put to. In contrast, someone who doesn’t acknowledge God and is completely heedless that he has to die one day miserably fails the test of life.