LLet’s ponder the widow with the ground meal and oil. It had been a hard year. She had just enough to make a meager last supper for son and herself before they lay down to die from starvation. Using your imagination, let yourself become the widow in the story. If you’re like me, feelings of hopelessness come forward.

 A stranger comes up to you and asks you to make him a cake with your remaining meal and oil. If you do this, you will not have the last meal you were planning for your son and yourself.  You consider this, but decide to give the man your last food. One less meal is not going to make a difference since you are dying from starvation anyway. The cake is made for the stranger…but to your surprise, you still have enough to feed your son and yourself. This man has given a blessing to your home. There is enough for one more meal!

This continues for days, possibly even weeks, and to your amazement, there is always enough for just one more meal for the three of you. Your life is very difficult, no one is there to help a widow except her children, of which there is only one boy. Suddenly, he dies. Your world crashes in on you.

…Don’t we feel like this at times in our lives? …

We feel there is nowhere to turn. Let’s return to the widow for a moment.  Filled with grief and hopelessness, the stranger who had given the household a blessing on the meager food supply when he arrived, seems to have brought a curse with him. Even though the stranger did not cause the death of the widow’s son, she seems to accuse him. To help the widow in her distress, the stranger lays on her son and calls for God to have mercy on the widow and her son. The son revives! How he really must be sent by God! A chance to have a new relationship with her son, to start things anew! A second chance!

Why do we as a whole believe if something bad has happened, that God has abandoned us? Would you have personally reacted differently from how the widow reacted? The woman with the ground meal and oil…no hope in sight…but blessings came into her life unexpectedly through the stranger. Did she notice the blessings the stranger brought as they happened? Or do you think it was only seen in hindsight? If she hadn’t helped the stranger, she and her son would have most likely died as she had planned. Hindsight is often said to be 20/20.

Have you ever looked back and saw how things worked out for the best, even if it didn’t feel like it at the time? Can you see the blessings? Hmm…I wonder…can you see God directing the traffic of blessings into your life? Sometimes a blessing can be a chance to do things over, a different way. To do things and make choices one would not have chosen if our eyes had not been opened to view the blessings in our lives.

Blessings will look different for each person. Some may appear large, others small. The most common perception is that blessings come in the form of “God stepping in and changing our circumstances through extraordinary measures”, and improving our life situations. Many call these type of blessings “miracles”. More commonly, miracles are not seen and life seems mundane. If we look, we can still see God’s hand guiding circumstances in our lives, helping us through our life situations.

Let me share with you some examples of the “ordinary” miracles which can occur in our lives:

A businessman is going to be late for work and forgets his business proposal on the counter. As he is getting into his car, he remembers and grabs it before he leaves his driveway. He quickly becomes stuck in traffic due to a pile up caused by the winter storm and ice. He is blessed! If the proposal had not been forgotten, the businessman would have been involved in the pile up! He was only a moment away from being in the crash. He received blessings for health and survival, thanks to forgetting the proposal. I do not believe the forgotten proposal was a coincidence. I believe God had stepped in, changing the situation. The businessman was given a second chance to live life anew; a second chance, like the widows’ son raised from the dead.

Or perhaps another story…An important merger with your company fell through. Things are very tense with the management staff. A couple months later, the company with which the merger had fallen through, is on the news in a financial scandal. The management staff are suddenly grateful the merger didn’t happen! Small blessings are all around us, but go unseen and unacknowledged as we race through our lives.

I believe we have the opportunity to see the blessings in our lives if we take the time to slow down and see them. We always seem to expect God to step in and help us, but do we ever think someone may have been sent to aid us? Just a common person like you or me?

Here is another story:

Your car dies on a country road for no apparent reason, you know there is enough gas because you just filled the tank. Nothing is around you except trees for miles. The beautiful countryside you were just enjoying, now seems daunting. As you get out of the car, you look under the hood and cannot find anything wrong. You are frustrated! As you reach for your cell phone for a tow truck, you begin to really hear the stillness around you. Suddenly you hear the sound of someone calling for help from the ravine at the side of the road. You look and see a car has slid off the road. You are there to help this person, you are sent as their angel of help. If you had been driving happily in your car, the call for help would have gone unnoticed, the car and driver in need would have been unseen and unheard in your travels. In this case, you were the other driver’s blessing.

Let each of us pause for a moment. Try to look at your life through someone else’s eyes, or better yet, God’s eyes. Remember, no matter what God sees, it is colored with love. What does God see about you, your family, your life situation, other areas of your life

…. (Pause)…

Now reflect for a moment and change your perspective. Compare how God sees your life as opposed to your view. What is the same? Different?

…(Pause)…

Can you see blessings you may have previously overlooked, or second chances waiting to be explored? If you still don’t see even one blessing, try changing your perspective and look again. You may have been a blessing to someone else.

Many blessings bump into us each day, unnoticed. If we are aware of the blessings in our lives, I believe we will act out our lives differently, because we start by holding a different point of view.  In essence, a second chance to do things different. Once we see our blessings, let us embrace them with gratefulness.

In nature, even roses have thorns, but they produce beauty despite this. Beauty for others to behold and share. Tears of thorns, joy of beauty. Our lives are so busy with many things demanding our attention, it is very easy to slip into old habits. Let’s take time to stop and count our blessings and be grateful. If we don’t make time, we’ll never find the time to see the blessings in our lives.

Take a moment…What are some things you are thankful for? These are real blessings. In essence, we are smelling the roses in the garden of our lives.

Sometimes we feel our lives are unraveling, but God is there with us, smiling, and helping us hold all the loose ends. Our structured life may start to fall apart around us, but it is a blessing. A chance to slow down, to see the little blessings in our lives we would ordinarily miss. A smile, a nod, a helping hand. When our lives are less structured, we actually have a chance to breathe, to gain a new perspective, learn a new skill, a chance to be who we really are! A chance to be open to seeing the multitudes of blessings in our lives.

We only need to Stop… and smell the roses!