This Thought for the Week article has been written by Rev Kirsten Coulter – she is a retired teacher, mental health support worker and a non-stipendiary priest in the Church of England.

Many of the holiday-makers coming to Berwick from the south of England this summer, when they arrived, breathed a sigh of relief when they breathed the fresh, cool air and even when they saw the grey sky at times.

Here are six ways in which you are blessed worth thinking about:

1) If you woke up this morning with more health than illness, you are more blessed than the million people who will not survive this week.

placeholder image — Rev Kirsten Coulter.

2) If you have never experienced the danger of battle, the loneliness of imprisonment, the agony of torture, or the pangs of starvation, you are better off than five hundred million people in the world.

3) If you have food in the fridge, clothes on your back, a roof over your head and a place to sleep, you are richer than 75 per cent of the world.

4) If you have money in the bank or in your wallet, or spare change in a dish somewhere, you rank among the top eight per cent of the world’s wealthy.

5) If you can attend a church meeting, or any group gathering, without fear of harassment, arrest, torture, or death, you are more blessed than three billion people in the world.

6) If you can read this script, you are more blessed than over two billion people in the world who cannot read at all.

There is always someone who is worse off; that doesn’t mean you revel in other people’s misery, but it ought to heighten your compassion and give you a sense of gratitude that spills over into thanksgiving each day.

Psalm 103 NLT: ‘May I never forget the good things that the Lord does for me.’

Rev Kirsten Coulter is a widow, living with two elderly rescue dogs. She is now supporting the leadership of Waypoint Church in Berwick. This is an independent, all-age, community church.