Count Your Many Blessings....UGH!
Okay, confession time. I can't do this. I don't know what it is about how my brain is wired but when I'm feeling down for whatever reason and I try to do this, I get to maybe 10 and ....I'm done. I got nothin'. It's not that I don't have a million blessings, I just can't seem to "name" them and therefore, don't reap the supposed benefits of whatever counting them would bring.
AND THEN....I came across this quote in one of those unwanted catalogs you never subscribed to but magically appear to clog your mailbox. Know the ones? I usually just chuck them out but for some reason on a particular day (supreme boredom?), I decided to leaf through one and found this gem on a tacky wall plaque.
"What if you woke up today with only the things you thanked God for yesterday?"
Eh? What's that? Let me read that again. Hmmm. Oh dear. Well, frankly, among other things, I'd probably be walking around in nothing more than my birthday suit, living a life akin to Betty Flintstone or worse. Get the picture? Suddenly, everything around me had value. Every relationship was priceless. I quickly saw I had an abundant life. In my brain, I automatically switched the quote to, "What if all I had tomorrow was what I thanked God for today?" Now my attitude was one of gratitude. Immense gratitude.
Through my mother's side, I am directly related to William Clayton. I knew that even before I knew that he was a "Mormon" because my mother was so proud of the fact that he wrote the world famous pioneer anthem, "Come Come Ye Saints." While I have come to be proud of that fact as well, some of the lines of the song left me scratching my head. "....and should we die before our journey's through, Happy day! All is well, all is well...." Isn't that actually a major bummer? If not for the one who died, for those who have to carry on without their loved one? I got the intended message but still it seemed to me that William might have been a tad overly optimistic. You can imagine my delight then when I came across a different interpretation of that song.
In an address given at a BYU devotional in 2018, Matthew Richardson shared this humorous anecdote.
"Years ago I was sitting on the stand in a chapel in Europe singing “Come, Come, Ye Saints.” A leader leaned over and whispered, “You know, the Polish translation of this song is quite different from the English version.”
“Really?” I countered.
“It doesn’t really read, ‘All is well! All is well!’”
I looked at him somewhat surprised.
“The real translation,” he said, “is ‘Not so bad, not so bad.’”
I couldn’t help but quietly chuckle. Then I thought of the pioneers who might not have always described their own circumstances as being “all is well.” But I could see how with their expanded vision and tremendous dedication they could say, “This is not so bad, not so bad,” and then with a deep breath take yet another step and continue to forge on."
I wonder if I have Polish ancestry. THAT translation makes sense to me! 😂
Finally, this last week, I came across a quote by Lorenzo Snow that I can totally get behind. He once said, “Serve faithfully and be cheerful. Brethren and sisters, the thing you should have in your mind, and which you should make a motto in your life, is this: Serve God faithfully, and be cheerful. I dislike very much, and I believe people generally do, to see a person with a woe begone countenance, and to see him mourning as though his circumstances were of the most unpleasant character. There is no pleasure in association with such persons.
“In the family it is always a good thing for the parent to be cheerful in the presence of his wife and children. And out of that cheerfulness may arise many good gifts.
“The Lord has not given us the gospel that we may go around mourning all the days of our lives. He has not introduced this religion for this purpose at all. We came into the world for certain purposes, and those purposes are not of a nature that require much mourning or complaint. Where a person is always complaining and feeling to find fault, the Spirit of the Lord is not very abundant in his heart. If a person wants to enjoy the Spirit of the Lord, let him, when something of a very disagreeable nature comes along, think how worse the circumstance might be, or think of something worse that he has experienced in the past.
“Always cultivate a spirit of gratitude. It is actually the duty of every Latter-day Saint to cultivate a spirit of gratitude” (Lorenzo Snow, 3 April 1897, DW, 54:481; Teachings of Lorenzo Snow, pp. 61-62)
Yes! President Snow gets me! I wholeheartedly agree that we should cultivate an "attitude of gratitude" and thereby find cheerfulness. I think that most people that know me find me a generally upbeat, cheerful person with only fleeting moments of "woe-begoneness." How I get there though has always caused me a bit of, shall I say, 'saintly guilt?' I just come at it through the back door rather than the front, so to speak.
So, for those of you like me, take heart! We are a grateful lot too. We're probably just Polish. 😉
AND THEN....I came across this quote in one of those unwanted catalogs you never subscribed to but magically appear to clog your mailbox. Know the ones? I usually just chuck them out but for some reason on a particular day (supreme boredom?), I decided to leaf through one and found this gem on a tacky wall plaque.
"What if you woke up today with only the things you thanked God for yesterday?"
Eh? What's that? Let me read that again. Hmmm. Oh dear. Well, frankly, among other things, I'd probably be walking around in nothing more than my birthday suit, living a life akin to Betty Flintstone or worse. Get the picture? Suddenly, everything around me had value. Every relationship was priceless. I quickly saw I had an abundant life. In my brain, I automatically switched the quote to, "What if all I had tomorrow was what I thanked God for today?" Now my attitude was one of gratitude. Immense gratitude.
Through my mother's side, I am directly related to William Clayton. I knew that even before I knew that he was a "Mormon" because my mother was so proud of the fact that he wrote the world famous pioneer anthem, "Come Come Ye Saints." While I have come to be proud of that fact as well, some of the lines of the song left me scratching my head. "....and should we die before our journey's through, Happy day! All is well, all is well...." Isn't that actually a major bummer? If not for the one who died, for those who have to carry on without their loved one? I got the intended message but still it seemed to me that William might have been a tad overly optimistic. You can imagine my delight then when I came across a different interpretation of that song.
In an address given at a BYU devotional in 2018, Matthew Richardson shared this humorous anecdote.
"Years ago I was sitting on the stand in a chapel in Europe singing “Come, Come, Ye Saints.” A leader leaned over and whispered, “You know, the Polish translation of this song is quite different from the English version.”
“Really?” I countered.
“It doesn’t really read, ‘All is well! All is well!’”
I looked at him somewhat surprised.
“The real translation,” he said, “is ‘Not so bad, not so bad.’”
I couldn’t help but quietly chuckle. Then I thought of the pioneers who might not have always described their own circumstances as being “all is well.” But I could see how with their expanded vision and tremendous dedication they could say, “This is not so bad, not so bad,” and then with a deep breath take yet another step and continue to forge on."
I wonder if I have Polish ancestry. THAT translation makes sense to me! 😂
Finally, this last week, I came across a quote by Lorenzo Snow that I can totally get behind. He once said, “Serve faithfully and be cheerful. Brethren and sisters, the thing you should have in your mind, and which you should make a motto in your life, is this: Serve God faithfully, and be cheerful. I dislike very much, and I believe people generally do, to see a person with a woe begone countenance, and to see him mourning as though his circumstances were of the most unpleasant character. There is no pleasure in association with such persons.
“In the family it is always a good thing for the parent to be cheerful in the presence of his wife and children. And out of that cheerfulness may arise many good gifts.
“The Lord has not given us the gospel that we may go around mourning all the days of our lives. He has not introduced this religion for this purpose at all. We came into the world for certain purposes, and those purposes are not of a nature that require much mourning or complaint. Where a person is always complaining and feeling to find fault, the Spirit of the Lord is not very abundant in his heart. If a person wants to enjoy the Spirit of the Lord, let him, when something of a very disagreeable nature comes along, think how worse the circumstance might be, or think of something worse that he has experienced in the past.
“Always cultivate a spirit of gratitude. It is actually the duty of every Latter-day Saint to cultivate a spirit of gratitude” (Lorenzo Snow, 3 April 1897, DW, 54:481; Teachings of Lorenzo Snow, pp. 61-62)
Yes! President Snow gets me! I wholeheartedly agree that we should cultivate an "attitude of gratitude" and thereby find cheerfulness. I think that most people that know me find me a generally upbeat, cheerful person with only fleeting moments of "woe-begoneness." How I get there though has always caused me a bit of, shall I say, 'saintly guilt?' I just come at it through the back door rather than the front, so to speak.
So, for those of you like me, take heart! We are a grateful lot too. We're probably just Polish. 😉
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