More from Ken Claar

I tend to get depressed around Thanksgiving and Christmas, and I have been particularly unhappy this last couple of months. I just got some behind-the-ear hearing aids from the Veterans Administration, and the process has been filled with nothing but wait and doubt. Shortly after I got them . . . and they worked wonderfully . . . a wire broke in one of the little hoses that go from the hearing aid to the earpiece. It has been almost a month, and I still haven’t gotten it back. The right aid worked wonderfully; I could even hear the pastor when he lowered his voice to make a point . . . but then that aid quit working. The problem is that there is a tiny filter in the earpiece that needs to be changed every two or three weeks. But the little tube that goes between the body and earpiece is tiny, and the filters are also tiny. With my macular degeneration, I can hardly see them at all. Besides that, the clinic is about twenty miles from my trailer, and my friends can’t always take me, especially not two or three times a month. So how’s that for a sad story?

Then I heard a sermon about checking out my blessings in Jesus, and at the same time both Larry and Wall brought me huge Thanksgiving feasts yesterday. (I told you about my wonderful friends in my 12/21/2025 devotion.) And I realized that—hearing aids or not—I am living a life filled with blessings, and God is watching over me day and night. It is not very smart of me to frown over the tiny upsets I have and forget the tremendous number of blessings I get from my Lord Jesus every day. My joy and relief is that I am forgiven when I forget these blessings.