Are You Ready for a Blessing?
We often think of a “blessing” as something good that has happened to us. When the doctor gives us a clean bill of health, we might say, “I’m so blessed.” Or when we receive news that we’ve been given a promotion at work, we may thank God for his blessing. When a natural disaster wipes out large sections of our community but spares our house, we tell our friends, “God just blessed our family.”
We associate blessing with a positive outcome, an event or experience that tangibly benefits us, such as narrowly avoiding an accident or receiving a check in the mail when we desperately needed it. Certainly the concept of blessing in Scripture implies the good that God showers upon us. We joyfully sing “Praise God from whom all blessings flow” because we believe that good things are given to those who follow God’s ways.
But perhaps our understanding of what constitutes a blessing from God needs to be expanded. Is it possible that a blessing may not be that which is desirable? What we think of as a blessing and what God desires for our lives may be two completely different things. After all, God seeks to mold us into useful vessels so that we can reflect his image in the world. If we understand blessing as only that which has a positive impact on our lives, we may miss a large part of what it means to be human and remain spiritual infants our entire lives. Should our goal in life be to sail on calm seas throughout our lives, never learning how to navigate through the tempests? Or are we made in such a way that we can only grow in faith and love by facing the storms that come our way?
Consider for a moment how God blessed Jesus. Immediately after the baptism of Jesus, when God affirmed Jesus as his unique presence in the world (Matt. 3:13-17)—surely the blessing of all blessings—the Spirit of God drove Jesus into the desert. What a remarkable blessing Jesus had received! How honored and special he must have felt when God put his stamp of approval on him. Yet, the blessing wasn’t accompanied by tangible benefit, but rather by deprivation and suffering. At the very moment when God blessed Jesus, the Spirit led him into a wilderness, a place of hunger, loneliness, and temptation and, dare I say, growth. Yes, in the wilderness Jesus grew in his understanding of what it meant to be anointed by God.
Is the Bible reminding us that blessing is not always connected to reward or that which makes our life easier? In other words, being blessed by God may not result in good health, wealth or success. There may be times when God’s blessing leads us into a place we would not choose. Blessing may lead to suffering, hardship, and even despair. In other words, to be blessed by God means to embrace both the perceived good and bad as opportunities for spiritual growth.
Albert Schweitzer
In the 19th century Albert Schweitzer was one of Europe’s leading scholars, musicians, and scientists. He had a very comfortable and rewarding life. One night at dinner, while hosting several of his closest friends, he told them he was going to Africa to spend the remaining years of his life as a medical missionary. His friends could not imagine why this famous man would do such a thing. He would be leaving behind a life of comfort and prestige to live in a land of poverty, disease, and death. “Why, why, why?” His friends could not conceive why he would waste his life where he would never be appreciated.
Finally, after his friends pleaded with him to give up such an outlandish plan, he said, “Don’t you know why I am going to Africa? God has called me.”
Sometimes a blessing may not lead us beside still waters, but may lead us into the maelstrom, where suffering and heartache are our only rewards. Do you think it was pleasant for Mother Teresa, who founded the Missionaries of Charity, to spend her life on the streets of Calcutta, caring for the poor and dying? Surely a woman who was as faithful to God’s work as Mother Teresa would be blessed by God. Maybe her life of destitution was God’s blessing! Maybe God knows what fulfills a life more than we do.
Remember the story of Goethe’s Faust? Faust sold his soul to the devil in exchange for a life where all of his dreams and desires would come true. We might even say he made a bargain with the devil for unlimited blessing. He wasn’t given just three wishes, but an infinite number of wishes. Whatever he wanted, he would receive. But the desirable things that came his way soon lost meaning. He became depressed and discovered that when so-called blessing is comprised only of selfish benefits, life soon loses significance.
Yes, God is faithful to send his blessings upon his children. Sometimes, though, we may fail to appreciate the blessings that come our way. The blessing that sends us into the wilderness, an event or experience of hardship, may be just the place where we meet God and discover that we have truly been blessed!
May we know the fulfillment of being blessed!
