Did you answer yes, no, or are you still waiting to see if this is somehow a trick question? If you answered yes, why did you do so? On what basis do you consider yourself to be blessed?
Cultures from all times and places have had their own ideas of what it means for one to be blessed. The modern American culture is no different. We are familiar with the language of blessing and we speak of being blessed. For all of my life I have lived in the south and I have become accustomed to what may be Bible belt cultural phenomena. I am familiar with the song God Bless America the salesman telling me to have a blessed day as I leave the department store, hearing “bless you” after a sneeze and the beloved Billy Graham benediction “the Lord bless y’all real good.” We are familiar with blessing and we have our own idea of what it is. To be blessed in this culture is to live the American Dream of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
But what if you can’t?
What if you have a debilitating illness, or your spouse dies? Can you be blessed then or does being blessed require that you have your health, family, friends, and that the bills are paid? We are prone to man centered thoughts so therefore our understanding of what it means to be blessed is often horizontal. Our blessedness is found in what we have (the people or possessions which surround us), or perhaps in something that is within us such as a sense of peace or well being. But what about on the vertical level? How do we relate our blessedness to God? Many will confess that God is the one who has blessed them but when an explanation is given of what it means for one to be blessed, quickly the attention is once again focused on the horizontal level. I am blessed by God because of what I have around me and/or within me.
Of course, everything we consider to be a blessing is indeed given to us by the good hand of God. The New Testament author James declares that “every good gift and every perfect gift is from above” (James 1:18). God has made every good thing in creation and it is he who bestows good gifts upon his creatures. “The Lord is good to all, and his mercy is over all that he has made” (Psalm 145:9). He is the giver of all good things and if we are blessed then there is no doubt that we have been blessed by our benevolent Creator. But again, does being blessed by God consist in these gifts? Can we only consider ourselves to be blessed because of what we have? In order to determine how blessed we are should we take inventory of all that is good in our lives? Are we like young children (and some adults) peeking under the Christmas Tree looking to see how many gifts have our name on the tags? Does he who has the most toys win? If being blessed consists of what we have then are we to conclude that prosperity and comfort equal God’s blessing while poverty and suffering are equivalent to God’s displeasure or even his curse upon our lives? Am I more blessed than others because I do not have cancer or because my children weren’t born with Down Syndrome? The point I hope to make is that there is a great difference in receiving blessings and being blessed.
Recently my family moved into a new home. My wife and I were sharing with one another what we particularly liked about the house that we had moved into. This home had many benefits (luxuries to us) that other places we had lived in did not. This was the first time in our seven years of marriage that we would have such things as attic storage space, walk in closets, and a garage with a paved driveway big enough for both of our vehicles. This house was newer, bigger, and nicer than anything we had lived in before. Our yard was big enough for our young boys to enjoy. They were excited that we could bring along their outdoor toys and other things that were previously kept by their kind grandparents due to a combination of theft and lack of storage . Though our home would still be considered small to many (a neighbor told me that he thought it to be a nice lil’ ol’ house in his own south Georgia vernacular), we thought it to be a significant improvement for us. We were so thankful for the way that God had blessed us. Blessed - yes, we were blessed by God to be living in our new home and we thanked God for his blessing on our family, especially when we remember that our living standard would be luxurious to most of the world’s population . We sort of felt like George Jefferson, we had “moved on up.” Our extended relatives affirmed that God had indeed blessed us when they saw the new place, some even told us of how proud they were of us. Though I think this was a way of saying that they were happy for us and I certainly do not think they meant proud in a sinful way, this comment made me wonder if they were proud or happy for us before. Could the same thing be said two years earlier when we left the comfort and security of everything we knew to plant a church? What about when we couldn’t quite get back on our feet after the move and lived with my grandmother for a few months? Could it be said that they were proud of us then?
As we discussed these things I posed the question to my wife of whether we were more blessed now than we were before. Certainly what we had been given was a blessing but could we remain blessed if those things were stripped from us again? Could we still say that we were blessed by God? What if we did lose our new luxuries, would that be a sign that God had abandoned us and removed his blessing for whatever reason he saw fit? Did we need to take the proper precautions to maintain and retain our newfound blessing? Did we need to make sure and bless others that we might remain in God’s blessing as I heard one woman say? She told me she liked the best in life so she treated others well in order to be blessed. “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” she said. Yes, these are the words of Jesus but it is no guarantee that you will receive the good that you give to others. That is not Christianity. That is charma, not grace. Grace pours itself out regardless of what it may gain from others. So were we blessed in our new home? Yes, we were. Were we more blessed than at other times in our lives? We both said no, but why not? We had everything we had before and now we had more, how could we not be more blessed?
If God chooses to bless someone what will it look like? Is it always tangible, as in our possessions? Will the events of our lives begin to go the way we would like them to or the way we think they should? This is one of the dangers I fear may be an effect of some modern Christian films. Typically, the main character’s life turns around as they convert to or return to Christianity. Marriage, job, and life in general make a turn for the better and everyone lives happily ever after. I don’t believe Christian film makers want to present a false hope of reality for non Christians but when the outcome of these films is combined with the prosperity gospel propagated by numerous televangelists, authors, and mega church pastors (the belief that God’s blessing is equivalent to one’s best life now) it is inevitable. The truth is that God’s covenant people have often been a suffering people. When one realizes the redemption offered in Jesus Christ, one might be found in the wilderness of life as the people of Israel found themselves after their exodus from Egypt. God’s blessing does not always mean a new home, a finer automobile, a promotion at work, or a turbulent free marriage; when one comes to Christ it could result in the departure of a spouse or the loss of a job - which could actually result in the bank repossessing one’s car and/or home. We might also note that many of the most vile and cruel people of human history have also been very wealthy. Did they have the blessing of God? It is possible to have much, to have many “blessings” and yet incur God’s wrath, finding one’s self to be cursed and not blessed at all.
If possessions are not the measuring stick of being blessed by God then in what way may we know that we are indeed blessed? Does it mean that certain fears are never realized? For instance, we have had many “scares” with our children where something seemed to be seriously wrong. For us, tests have always returned fine. This we call a blessing and rightly so, but are we more blessed than other relatives and friends because our tests came back fine while they were told that cancer was found in them or in their children? Will our being blessed be confirmed to us through one or more spiritual experiences, some sort of burning in the bosom or inherent sense of peace? Should we trust ourselves and what we feel or know to be true within? Do we know we are blessed because we just feel it or know it deep down in the heart? The problem with this subjective test of God’s blessing is the same as seeking to understand it through material possessions; what happens when my inward feelings change? What if the sense of peace I once had is no longer there? If I don’t feel blessed, does it mean that God has forsaken me and removed his hand from my life?
Assessing one’s blessedness by these means focuses on what is in or around us and very little on God himself, whom we claim has blessed us. The Scriptures present a different paradigm of what it means to be truly blessed by God.
“Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven,
whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man against whom the Lord counts no iniquity,
and in whose spirit there is no deceit” (Psalm 32:1-2).
whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man against whom the Lord counts no iniquity,
and in whose spirit there is no deceit” (Psalm 32:1-2).
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