”They Shall be Blessed”

In verse 2 of 1 Nephi 14 a prophecy is made concerning the Gentiles that “they shall be a blessed people upon the promised land forever”. I have actually been thinking about what it means to receive blessings and be blessed and the deeper question of “why”. I feel that I am living in a time where this prophecy is being fulfilled, and I am one of many people who are “blessed”.
When I was younger I used to wonder why I was given so much in this life. My feelings of gratitude for my family, my faith, my health overwhelmed me sometimes. I would compare the ease and opportunities in my life to the lack of such in other people of the world. I didn’t understand what I did to deserve a more fortunate circumstance than the billions of people born into poverty, ignorance, subjection, or misery. I kept wanting to point to some logical cause and effect, and although I feel there are some answers to that question, I was mostly left with more questions on the lack of justice and fairness of it all.
Recently I have felt enlightened on a new perspective of my “blessings”. My thoughts on this are not neceassarily new, but have felt more real as I have grown older and am in a different stage of life. My line of thinking as a young man was focused on the past and what led to my current state. For much of my life I also thought little of the future, or when I did think of the future it was only in chunks (what college am I going to go to, when I get married, what do I want to be when I grow up). But now I have mostly arrived at the points where I had been focused for so long (marriage, children, career), and I am more focused on what I am going to accomplish now that I have arrived than the journey of how to get there.
So with that new line of thinking I realize that my “blessings” have put me in a position where I can help and influence others. I have always known that service is important and have enjoyed opportunities to help in whatever capacity I can, but now it feels more fundamental. Now it feels like this is the purpose of my very existence. This has been a very liberating line of thinking for me. Regardless of how I got here, I am here. And now I can look at injustice, a lack of fairness, poverty, ignorance, subjection, and even misery as an opportunity to serve, to help, to enlighten, to bless the lives of others in whatever way possible. I truly feel “blessed” and that brings me joy, but it doesn’t stop there, my blessings were meant to serve and help others and that is what I hope to do with the rest of my life as a husband, father, professor, friend, member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, neighbor, acquaintance, researcher, stranger, and person of this world.