Thinking out loud about "blessing"
(Full disclosure: I'm thinking out loud in this post)
I've been thinking a lot about the idea of "blessing" lately. The idea of "being a blessing," or even more importantly, "being blessed." People will say to me, "God blessed so-and-so with a really good job where he/she makes a lot of money." Or, some will say, "God blessed me with this _______________ (fill in the blank with whatever inanimate object you prefer). Or, "God blessed me with a wonderful spouse." Or, "God blessed me with a good job."
On and on it goes.
I'm going to be completely honest and say this: I've never felt any true resonance with those kinds of statements. Does God really give people things, or people, or jobs, or whatever, as a "blessing?" Is this some mark of God's approval of someone's life?
What IS a "blessing?" Most popular online dictionaries connect it to some sort of favor or protection. One site goes so far as to define it as a gift or a benefit given to us by God or another person. This all sounds very familiar to most of us, as that is what is commonly accepted when we think of the term.
One of the most popular Scriptures associated with the idea of "blessing" is found in Numbers 6:22-27
The Lord spoke to Moses, saying, “Speak to Aaron and his sons, saying, Thus you shall bless the people of Israel: you shall say to them,
The Lord bless you and keep you;
the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you;
the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.
“So shall they put my name upon the people of Israel, and I will bless them.”
Here, the term "blessing" is associated with intangible things such as grace and peace, and the presence of God represented by his face shining upon the people.
The passage in Deuteronomy 28 seems to indicate some idea of "stuff" as a measure or indication of blessing. Here God basically tells Israel through Moses and the Levitical priests that, if they obey God's law, they will get things:
Successful crops
Children
Cattle
Food
Victory in battle
Recognition as a nation
Of course, following this there is a warning (vv. 15-68) of what will happen if they disobey. Suffice to say it's not good. I wonder if we ever think about that side of what it means to be blessed, or not blessed?
Jesus had a different take on things in the famous passage known as The Beatitudes (Matthew 5:5-12):
Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.
Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.
Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.
The term "blessed" here is drawn from the Greek work markarioi meaning "fully satisfied." It struck me how different this is from how we popularly describe what it means to be blessed. To most people, to "be blessed" seems to indicate possession of something that we can hold up as proof of God's favor. If we don't have anything for "blessing show and tell," well, we must not be blessed. Am I getting this wrong? Too black-and-white? Too cut-and-dried?
I'll be honest here: For most of my life I have heard the message that things equalled blessing. And not just things, but certain types and qualities of things. I've heard things like, "I made a list of all the things I wanted in a spouse, and I got them all: height, hair color, eye color, personality, sense of humor, etc."
Lists. I just don't know how I feel about "list prayers." For some reason something inside me recoils a lot when I hear someone proclaim they prayed their "list prayer" and got everything, or almost everything, they wanted. And now they're blessed.
So what do we conclude when we pray the "list prayer" and don't get what we wanted? I know this creeps into "sovereignty of God" territory, which I plan to write about very soon, but how do we answer that question? What do we say to folks who've been faithful and walked "through the valley of the shadow," and sometimes can barely function or scrape by in the world? Do we just conclude they are not blessed?
It doesn't work. In fact, it's right down hurtful, shaming, and discouraging.
A few years ago, Natalie Grant recorded a song called "Our Hope Endures," which reads, in part:
You would think only so much can go wrong
Calamity only strikes once
And you assume that this one has suffered her share
Life will be kinder from here
Sometimes the sun stays hidden for years
Sometimes the sky rains night after night
When will it clear
But our hope endures the worst of conditions
It's more than our optimism
Let the earth quake
Our hope is unchanged
How do we comprehend peace within pain
Our joy at a good man's wake
Walk a mile with a woman whose body is torn
With illness but she marches on
Emanuel, God is with us
El Shaddai, all sufficient
Emanuel, God is with us
El Shaddai, all sufficient
Emanuel, God is with us
El Shaddai, all sufficientWe never walk alone
This is our hope
This reminded me of a passage in Gregory Boyle's book, Barking to the Choir: The Power of Radical Kinship. Boyle writes,
In spite of God's magnitude, we have managed successfully to domesticate God. Beg. Roll over. We prefer God tamed and ready to do OUR bidding. We have trained God, if you will, to 'do God's business' outside. No doubt though, God wants to be found in the mess inside. We have settled for a 'partial God,' as Richard Rohr puts it, when every minute of every moment we are asked to 'move beyond the mind we have' and land increasingly on a renewed and expansive view of God. We are human beings, so we endlessly create God in our own image. We can't help ourselves. But certainly we can catch ourselves.
We can catch ourselves.
I think it's very important to be careful about proclaiming to others that we are "blessed" because we got what we wanted, or because we have certain things or lots of money, or whatever you want to plug in there. I honestly don't know for sure, but I really wonder if all the stuff we have is all that important to God? Is he really all that busy ticking off our checklist of "wants" so we can proclaim his blessings?
Or does what he want for us revolve more around eternal things like a whole heart, a healed mind, a settledness in our heart that comes from knowing he really meant it when he said "I will not forget you." Should our focus be on "Emmanuel, God is with us" instead of on getting everything on our list? How does that change how we view God, and who he is to us? Is what is important more centered around the internal more than the external, which is where we tend to assign the label "blessing." Jesus never really talked about the external all that much, except to call out hypocrites who were like "whited sepulchers" (Matthew 23) filled with the bones of dead men.
Boyle goes on to write about a red string he keeps tied around his wrist that has a knot in the center. The goal, Boyle states, is to keep the knot in the center of his wrist. Why? Boyle writes,
Over the course of the day, the knot works its way to the side of my wrist, and I'm constantly moving the knot back to my wrist's center. The knot represents the God who I long to be at the center of my life. It helps me remain restful in that center - unable to think of myself except in terms of God. It returns me to the stillness there. 'Let us. . . strive to enter into that rest,' we read in Hebrews, knowing that this is never an end in itself but equips us to follow Jesus and create the kind of kinship about which God dreams.
And so I wonder lately: Is it wise or prudent to proclaim that God has blessed us when we get the things we want? Is "blessing" really even tied to tangible things? This is not to say that we should't be thankful for what we have - a safe place to live, a car to drive, food to eat, clothes to wear, friends and family, etc. But to proclaim blessing in the face of those who struggle is, I believe, to do a disservice, to add insult to injury, to confuse, to cause doubt. But to connect blessing to those intangible things of which Jesus referenced in Matthew 5 is to lean into the immovable promises given in God's own voice to his people of all generations.
Perhaps I have a long way to go on this topic. Certainly my current season in life is one of deconstruction and reconstruction of a more biblical and whole view of who God is. But whatever the case, I want to know him. Not stuff, not lists, just him. That is the blessing I know for sure that I want.