Then which of the favours of your Lord will ye deny?

If you have the basics: food, water and shelter, you are luckier than most people in this world. If you don't wake up at night to the sounds of bombs and people screaming, you are luckier than a lot of people in this world. If you have all your five senses and are in general, a healthy person with no physical or mental health defects, you are still among most of the lucky ones.

Imagine a world without vision. A world where you can't smell a rose or freshly baked cookies. Imagine not being able hear and experience laughter, not being able to hear the rain falling at night. Imagine not knowing what a smile looks like, or your own family. Imagine not being able to walk or run or do any of the things you normally do, living a handicapped life, or one where you are always in fear; wondering when your next meal will be or if you will be bombed next..

I was going to college this morning when Helen Keller crossed my mind. I have so much respect for this woman. But she's another topic for another day. If we didn't have any of these senses, if we had to go through immense fear of being bombed, kidnapped or raped every day..how would we cope? How do the people who do go through this cope?

All I know is that if you lead a "normal" life you are very, very, very lucky. But are we grateful? Do we seriously sit down and thank our Lord and at least reflect on how blessed we are? No amount of money can replace my life. Forget my life, my eyesight alone isn't worth all the money in the world. If I spent my entire life thanking God for one blessing, just one blessing, it would not be enough. I am so blessed. So blessed so blessed so blessed. And I don't show much gratitude to my Lord. I don't thank Him enough. And every time I see someone A LOT less fortunate than I, this verse from the Qur'an runs through my mind:

"Then which of the favours of your Lord will ye deny?" {55.13}*

But we shouldn't need a reminder to tell us how lucky we are. We shouldn't be reminded only when we see or hear about someone's unfortunate life or death. We should try to remember our blessings every time we see something pretty, or smell something good. When we wake up to the sounds of birds. Even when we smell something nasty, at least we can smell. We don't need to remember Him when we hear about something bad and think to ourselves, "wow..I'm pretty lucky." We always remember and turn to God during the bad times. But we need to thank Him for the good times as well, and, in my opinion, more so than the bad times.

* Actually, this verse runs through the same chapter a lot. The link to the whole Chapter is provided above in the title.