I celebrated a birthday last week and I can honestly say it was one of the best days I have had in a really long time. What’s weird about that is that I was a little bummed out when my birthday fell on a Sunday. I figured that since Sundays are kind of busy for ministers, it wouldn’t get to be a day that I normally envision a birthday being: relaxing, enjoying some of my favorite foods and connecting with family and friends. Last Sunday was especially busy with meetings to help launch new ministries, helping lead Griefshare in the evening and of course, a morning full of Sunday School and Worship.
When the day was done, I was very tired. All the ministry responsibilities were complete and I had heard from dozens of friends, some from Africa and Asia! I had connected with all my children and had great conversations. Camille had baked my favorite cake to perfection and the congregation just made me feel so special that by the end of the day I was whipped, but I was feeling an over whelming sense of being blessed.
“Blessed” is a word that we Church people use in our vocabularies often. You need to listen closely to how it is being used in a sentence because its one of those words with several nuanced meanings. To be clear, I normally use the word blessed to describe my awareness of undeserved good fortune. One of the challenges of living in God’s Kingdom is learning to accept what normally would not be seen as good fortune (mourning, persecution, suffering) as indeed being “blessed”. This is part of what Jesus was driving at when enumerating what we commonly know as the Beatitudes. (but that is a blog for another time!)
Family, friends, attention, expressions of love and even the feeling of being tired after a very productive day are the fortunes I am specifically referring to. Monday I was thinking about it all and was thanking God for it when a question hit me: why am I so blessed? As I started down the trail of processing that in my mind, I began to think in bigger terms, not just about my blessings but about “blessings” in general. What is God up to when He blesses us? Does this mean he like me better than others? Is this supposed to be something I just think about and say, “wow, isn’t this great!? The longer I thought the more I realized that God was certainly up to something and it really wasn’t as difficult to figure out as I was making it.
We are blessed in order that we can bless others. Simple. I don’t deserve His blessings and I certainly can’t earn them and yet I am blessed. One of the most common mistakes that was repeated over and over in the pages of the Bible is when someone is blessed by God and instead of being a river through which the blessings can continue flowing, they became like a dam that stopped the blessings flowing and eventually were undone by them. The lesson is this: any time I fixate on the blessings instead of the one blessing me, God, I am headed for trouble.
So now I am on the lookout for opportunities to share the love, not hoard it! That’s the reason God is blessing us, so that we can be well-resourced to accomplish His purposes. My prayer for you is that when you are counting your blessings, you will do so with an eye to who God might be leading you to be His hands and feet in order to keep the blessings going! Happy blessing!
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