It's that part of the year when we take stock at least in our minds of how far we had gone this year. It remains only two months to go. How time flies.

We are used to reading people's write-ups on how their year had gone and we can't help it when it is full of lamentations, near misses, excuses, and stories of every kind leaning towards negativities.
It's evident from most of the write-ups in these forms that we are far from reality. At times after reading most of them, you will not help but see that what most people rate as doing well or blessing is mostly mundane. Many lean on monetary terms or promotions in their workplaces. Not many ever stop to appreciate that being healthy, and having personal and family peace is the number one blessing of the year.

It's in human nature to rate those things as rights not privileges or take them for granted. We take life, as right as if no one in our age grade has ever died since our youth. As if no one we know even partially has ever died or even that we did not see those we know, or our neighbors, classmates, or acquaintances in pain for the loss of a friend, loved ones, kids, siblings, etc.
We never stopped to acknowledge their loss, their pain, etc. They are other people, not us. It's what happens to other people, not us. It can never happen to us. Our life is encapsulated therefore, we are invincible to such losses and pains.

Thoughts of this nature make us not rate health, peace, and life as important factors needed factoring as blessings in our stocktakings. We jump to money, promotions, and earthly things as blessings. Do you think it was in vain that God commended Solomon for not asking for wealth or success in capturing his enemy's territories? Or even killing off those who wanted him overthrown. He went for wisdom and understanding.

We know that health is wealth and there is no generation that assertion is much more truthful than ours. COVID was a tiny reminder, the Israeli and Palestinian ways of living second, even being an African should be counted as third. They say it's easier to destroy than to build,

My country Nigeria was recently named as the second most prayerful nation in the world and ignorant people were jumping up in jubliation. No one even wants to hear that it's a sign that all is not well in our personal and public lives, a sign that the country is not in good order, a sign that people found things hopeless and their only hope is melancholy and handing God and god's things over reluctantly. Prayer is always the last resort of the poor and hopeless people.

People don't know that it's even a man alive who counts blessings, a man healthy who takes stock, and a man in control of his sense and health who worries about money. Many have found that money is useless during inflation alone or war. Let's keep a sick wealthy man aside.

What we consider as the number one blessing can be useless during conflicts. You might have a billion in cash in your house, but you can buy anything because there is nothing to buy. Scarcity of food and other items during war or even serious disease have opened our eyes to the uselessness of money yet this year alone you are naming it as your number one blessing over life and health, many died because of it. Think about that.

     Not only that it come in distance third or fourth to many, but it has the power to kill two or more people who rate it over their lives near you and this month you are taking imagined stock, and naming it as a priority, many in your frame of mindset isn't around to do so too.

The idea is to count your blessings and name them one by one like the saying goes and see when lamenting of lack of God's blessings this year in your life that not only heaven is God of the eleventh hour like some preachers always say but you are overlooking many blessings in your counting already. Important ones.

 Who knows if such oversights are even behind the reasons we kept lamenting each year of the same thing? Some will even prefer to trade this blessing they rate as nothing for the one they rate as something till they start like many before them to ask God to take back his money and return their health to him. 

An appreciative heart attracts what it appreciates and more. God added the other half of the blessing to Solomon. Better to ask for wisdom like Solomon for he knows with it, he will never lack food on his table. Think deep.