Giving Thanks

Have you received this info via e-mail lately?

• If you woke up this morning with more health than illness ... you are more blessed than the million who will not survive this week.
• If you have never experienced the danger of battle, the loneliness of imprisonment, the agony of torture, or the pangs of starvation ... you are ahead of 500 million people in the world.
• If you can attend a church meeting without fear of harassment, arrest, torture, or death ... you are more blessed than three billion people in the world.
• If you have food in the refrigerator, clothes on your back, a roof overhead and a place to sleep ... you are richer than 75% of this world.
• If you have money in the bank, in your wallet, and spare change in a dish someplace ... you are among the top 8% of the world's wealthy.
• If your parents are still alive and still married ... you are very rare, even in the US and Canada.
• If you can read this message, you just received a double blessing in that someone was thinking of you, and furthermore, you are more blessed than over two billion people in the world that cannot read at all.
  

It's posted all over the Internet on sites like Interesting Facts to Keep Life in Perspective. These sites also give statistics based on the idea that if a village of 100 represented the world population x% would Asian, x% would be Christian, etc. The idea, apparently, is to make people who live in first world counties realize how good they've got it and to feel thankful (and possibly guilty) about it.

I thought the numbers looked questionable, so I looked this data on the Urban Legends Reference Page, which confirmed my hunch that the data isn't quite right.

Even so, Thanksgiving is a time for remember all the blessings we take for granted, like those listed above. I am thankful for these things. I thank God every day that I live in the United States of America, and I pray for our soldiers who are fighting for the freedom of people who have never known the blessings and freedom we take for granted.

Happy Thanksgiving.