Taking Our Blessings for Granted

A story is told of Abraham Lincoln.

One day the President summoned to the White House a surgeon in the Army of the Cumberland from the state of Ohio. The major assumed that he was to be commended for some exceptional work.

During the conversation Mr. Lincoln asked the major about his widowed mother.

She is doing fine, he responded.

How do you know asked Lincoln. You haven’t written her. But she has written me. She thinks that you are deadand she is asking that a special effort be made to return your body.

At that the Commander and Chief placed a pen in the young doctor’s hand and ordered him to write a letter letting his mother know that he was alive and well.

Oh, the blessings that we take for granted. Oh, the wretchedness ofingratitude.

It was Shakespeare who worded it more appropriately than everwe could. He wrote:

“Blow blow thou winter wind. Thou art not so unkind as man’s ingratitude.”