Bless You.

bless: to hallow or consecrate by religious rite or word: to invoke divine care for …Miriam Webster’s Dictionary

To invoke divine care for... What an inspiring definition of what it means to bless.

I have been thinking a lot lately about what it means to be blessed, to receive blessings, or to bless others, etc. Working at a seminary, it is unavoidable to hear such words thrown around in an almost nauseating manner. I suppose that is what fueled my interest in this concept in the first place. I hear people talk all the time about “counting your blessings,” “giving thanks for God’s blessings,” “I am too blessed to be stressed,” and so on. I hear talk of priestly blessings, ceremonial blessings, and many who offer "bless you's" when I sneeze! I am even guilty of preceding my signature on most documents with “Blessings.”

But what does it really mean to be blessed? How do we really know that something is truly a blessing, or like Webster's suggests, an authentic manifestation of "divine care?" Further, who is qualified to bless, or where do blessings come from? I wrote this blog to address a fraction of the questions that arose from this one sweet little word, "bless" This is what I came up with.

In a consumer driven culture, I suspect that much of what we define as a “blessing” is nothing more than the reception of monetary/material goods, services, or much desired conveniences that make our lives easier. Such things are certainly not bad! I happen to be a big fan of monetary and/or material goods that make my life easier, but I am not convinced that is the fullest or truest extent of what a blessing is.

I mean think about it. Is it a blessing that you qualified for that ginormous home loan that you cant really afford? Is it a blessing that you got that well paying job that sucks the life out of you and robs you of quality time with friends and family? Is it a blessing to have opportunities that others do not have, or did you just grow up in the right family?

The more I think about “blessing” not only do I wonder if there isn’t a very fine line between a blessing and a curse, I also wonder if one person’s “blessing” is actually another person’s curse.

This past Sunday I stumbled across “The Hour of Power,” a television broadcast church service hosted by a well known Evangelical Christian leader, Robert Shuller Jr. In his sermon, he too spoke of blessings. He used the example of his morning coffee and described it as a small blessing resulting from God’s provision. He took time to ponder all of the hands who participated in the crafting of the mug, to the picking of the coffee beans, and he thanked God for it. To him this was an excellent example of how God provides for us in the smallest of ways, and reminded people to think about all those little things that we are “blessed” with on a daily basis.

I am not sure if it was the cynic in me or my awareness of unfair work conditions in the coffee industry, but I was annoyed by his analogy and determined that it proved the following suspicion: we wouldn’t know how to spot a real blessing if it bit us in the ass. Maybe it was the image of poverty stricken, brown skinned laborers picking coffee beans for dollars a day, so we could nurse our addictions that made Shuller’s point hard to swallow. I just couldn’t help but think that in order for something to be a blessing for one, it couldn’t be a curse for someone else. If Robert Shuller’s god is in fact responsible for providing divine care through a daily caffeine fix, what does that say about those who suffer needlessly in that very same process? Are we to believe that God uses people in a seemingly unjust way, to bless other people with something as trivial as a morning cup of joe?

The example of a blessing used by this pastor made me question if there are other things we view as blessings that actually cause harm to others or even ourselves, but are seem like good things on the outside. I immediately came up with long lists of things in my head; everything from bras to air conditioning.

(Did you know that bras have affected womens' abilities to breastfeed???)

What I came up with made me think that if we believe that a blessing involves divine care or provision, testing whether or not something actually is a blessing means really looking at the holistic nature of it, as well as it’s timelessness. I think that something that is a blessing today will be a blessing forever. It can’t, shouldn’t, or won’t become a curse. If it did or does, then the “blessing” was or is just a well dressed curse from the beginning!

Here is the good news. If our perceived “blessings” in the superficial selfish sense are actually curses in disguise, then the opposite must also bet true! Things that seem like curses may in fact be blessings!!! How so, you ask? Take for example gas prices. I don’t know a person alive who doesn’t think the price of gasoline isn’t a curse and possibly even a crime against humanity. But something amazing is happening as a result of high gas prices. People are coming together to car pool, bulk grocery shop, and we are making decisions that affect our wallets and the environment. Employers are instituting shorter work weeks, and people are getting creative with how they spend time with friends and family on a budget. I hate the high price of gasoline, but the affects of this strain is actually yielding something that looks much more beneficial in the long run, than a quick fix of lowered prices.

So the next time you hear someone or yourself say, “What a blessing!” think about it a little more. Is it really a blessing or merely a much desired convenience that is good for some, but detrimental to others? In the same vain, when you feel the weight of burdens or “curses” think about those a little more too. Consider the possibility that blessings come in tow with difficult circumstances, not just pleasant ones where our ears are tickled with words that are easy to hear, or circumstances that turn us into over privileged, complacent, entitled, apathetic boobs.