Blog Your Blessings Sunday

My mother’s roses are in full bloom right by the front step of the house. The sun is shin­ing brightly this morn­ing and it is a beau­ti­ful 62 degrees right now but will warm into the 80’s as the day progresses.

When I was a kid going to Sun­day School, we used to have “open­ings” which was an intro­duc­tory period dur­ing which we all gath­ered in the Parish Hall to sing some songs, give our offer­ing, say prayers, and hear announce­ments before being dis­missed to our class­rooms for instruc­tion.¹

One of the women who led the “open­ing” for many years used to always start off by say­ing “This is the day the Lord has made” to which we responded, as a group, “Rejoice and be glad in it!” This morn­ing when I saw the sun shin­ing brightly in a per­fect blue sky and my mother’s roses bloom­ing just out­side the door, that phrase came back to me. We get so wrapped up in all the things we have to attend to and accom­plish, so obsessed with our goals and wed­ded to our respon­si­bil­i­ties that we too often for­get to notice the beauty around us.

Yes­ter­day morn­ing, dri­ving toward my house on the way home from water aer­o­bics, I saw my beau­ti­ful, vibrant red roses and imme­di­ately thought, “Blog Your Bless­ings!” So I must thank the Blue Pan­ther who founded this weekly meme for remind­ing me to take a few moments out at least once each week to be grate­ful, espe­cially for this kind of beauty in my environment:

The fact that I can see those roses is some­thing that I never take for granted. I wake up each morn­ing, open my eyes, and breathe a sigh of relief that I still have the gift of vision. So look­ing at those roses reminds me to say a hugh “thank you” here for Drs. Thomas Salzano (retired), Arun Patel, and their col­leagues, who are among the finest reti­nal spe­cial­ists in the world. There are no words suf­fi­cient to express my grat­i­tude for their ongo­ing care and treatment.So I think I shall sim­ply let Ethel’s roses — her legacy — speak for me on this lovely Sun­day morning.
Be well and enjoy your many blessings!

Track­posted to Out­side the Belt­way, Perri Nelson’s Web­site, Is It Just Me?, Big Dog’s Weblog, Lean­ing Straight Up, The Amboy Times, Pur­su­ing Holi­ness, third world county, Right Celebrity, Woman Honor Thy­self, Wake Up Amer­ica, Stageleft, , stikN­stein… has no mercy, Pirate’s Cove, Nuke’s news and views, The Pink Flamingo, Dumb Ox Daily News, Blog @ MoreWhat.com, The Ran­dom Yak, A Blog For All, DeMe­di­a­cratic Nation, Adam’s Blog, Weblog­gin, Cao’s Blog, Phastidio.net, The Bull­win­kle Blog, , Jo’s Cafe, Con­ser­v­a­tive Cat, The Crazy Rants of Saman­tha Burns, The World Accord­ing to Carl, Walls of the City, Blue Star Chron­i­cles, High Desert Wan­derer, and The Yan­kee Sailor, thanks to Link­fest Haven Deluxe.

1. In fact, that was how I became a church musi­cian and spent most of the next 40+ years play­ing in church … when I was in fifth grade, I was tapped to be the pianist for those “openings.”

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