Blessed

What does it mean to be blessed?

We ask God to bless our food, our country, our efforts...

We ask for blessings of health, wealth, and prosperity...

We consider others blessed if they have a good family, enough money, and nice things...

But what does it really mean to be blessed?

I've thought about this question recently, because someone said to me, "God has blessed me with a wonderful family." I have probably heard that sentence (or one like it) at least a hundred times, but this time it struck a dissonant chord in my mind. Honestly, it made me question the validity of such statements altogether. It has made me ask "What does it mean to be blessed?"

Blessing seems to somehow be connected with reward, and if that is the case, then blessing is connected with effort (uh-oh Calvinists!). But if that is the case, then how can God "bless" one with a good family (looks like the Calvinists aren't out yet!)? I'd like to think we're looking at "blessing" all wrong. I'd like to think that we have distorted an idea of blessing with our own ideas of what we want and think we need. In fact, I think we've done it so much so, that God is all too often looked at as a "giant ATM in the sky" simply waiting for us to swipe our divine debit card and punch in our purpose-driven PIN. Allow me to unfold my thoughts for a moment.

One says, "God has blessed me with a good family." This individual says this reflecting on the seemingly happy marriage between his mother and father and the many happy memories of childhood. He looks at his own children and their apparent perfection and cannot help but think that (for whatever reason) God has blessed his family.

Another looks at her family and sees a shattered marriage, a childhood fractured by split custody, late child support checks, and divided holidays. And he/she can't even begin to think that God has somehow "blessed" such a family.

Still another sees the obvious comfort of wealth, the stagnant opulence of a life lived without care or concern and says "God has blessed..." All the while another child is born into the cyclical hell that is systemic poverty.

One looks at a family portrait and thinks of the joy of the coming holidays, while another gazes at a 20 year old picture of a lost son and cannot help but feel the decades of loneliness closing in around her.

Maybe we've gotten too comfortable equating blessing with comfort. Maybe we've gotten to used to the idea that God can bless us and not others and still go to bed at night feeling we have an appropriate sense of who God is. Maybe, just maybe, we don't understand blessing at all.

The prophet Amos told the people of Israel in the 8th century BCE that they had misunderstood what it meant to be blessed. They were rich, lying on ivory couches, trafficking other human beings just because they could, and buying up possessions and property...all in the name of being blessed. The prophet calls them "cows of Bashan" and threatens them with the eminent "Day of YHWH." They equated blessing with comfort...and they were carted off in chains by Assyria.

Maybe blessing has less to do with what we receive and more to do with what others receive from us? I know that sounds simple and trite, but maybe that's it. Rather than saying, "God has blessed me with such a great family" one ought to say, "God blessed another through my family." I don't know. I do know that there is a whole in equating blessing with comfort that cannot be easily glazed over by over-digested theologies or under-processed philosophy.

Blessing does not, cannot, and should not equal comfort. If it does, it makes God a liar and the gospel that hinges on painful nails and splintered wood is void.

CPT