August 4, 2019
Whatever is good gift and perfect is a gift coming down to us from God our Father, who created all the lights in the heavens. He never changes or casts a shifting shadow.
(James 1:17 NLT)
The hymn, Count Your Blessings, is a song of thankfulness. Today, we often say, “Count your blessings,” especially when a friend or loved one is struggling. However, that was not the intention of Rev. Johnson Oatman who wrote the hymn in 1897. His focus was to use the hymn to be a reminder to take our problems and concerns to God in prayer.
The story of Rev. Oatman is an interesting one. His father was considered to be the “best singer in town” and fostered Rev. Oatman’s great love of church music at an early age. But unlike his father, he did not possess his father’s great singing talent. Rev. Oatman went on to become a fill-in preacher for the Methodist Episcopal Church, but he was never considered to be a great preacher and never served a single church on a full-time basis.
While serving as a fill-in preacher, Rev. Oatman still wondered if God possibly had other plans for him. He longed to be a soul winner for the Lord, and he prayed and continued to seek God’s guidance for his life. How often have all of us wondered the same thing?
At age of 36, Rev. Oatman discovered he had a talent for writing beautiful hymns. He used his musical skills to “preach the gospel” through his many beautiful hymns, writing songs almost daily and producing an average of 200 per year, with a total of over 5,000 hymns in his life!
Count Your Blessings is a hymn of thankfulness, and a reminder for us to take our problems and concerns to God in prayer. It has the beautiful lyrics:
Count your blessings, name them one by one,
Count your blessings, see what God has done!
Count your blessings, name them one by one,
Count your many blessings, see what God has done.
"Concentrate on counting your blessings and you’ll have little time to count anything else."
- Woodrow Kroll
Blessings to you.