Beth Henricks
May 30, 2021
A good friend of mine called me last week and said she ran across a video tape she had made interviewing my mother when she was 91 years old. They covered a range of topics regarding theology, Christianity and how to live a fulfilling life. On this video tape my mom looks into the camera and says that in the last few years of her life she wakes up each morning and asks God, how can I be a blessing to someone today? A simple mantra, powerful, life changing and not easy to live into every day.
As we celebrate Memorial Day this weekend , we are all reflecting on important people in our lives that are not with us anymore. We miss them and we cherish our memories of them. Yet their wisdom and their words live on in pictures, videos, in our hearts and memories.
As the poem states
Love Doesn’t Die
Give what’s left of me away
now that I’m gone.
Remember me with a smile and laughter
and if you need to cry…
cry for your brother or sister, who walk in grief beside you.
And when you need me,
put your arms around anyone and give
to them what you need to give to me.
I want to leave you something…
something better than words
or sounds.
Look for me in the people
I’ve known or loved or
helped in some special way.
Let me live in your eyes
as well as in your mind.
You can love me most
by letting love live
within the circle of your arms,
embracing the frightened ones.
Love doesn’t die, people do…
so when all that’s left of me is love,
give me away as best you can.
I’ll see you at home,
where I will be waiting.
My mother was speaking to me through this video she made a number of years ago. How can I be a blessing to someone every day? Blessing and blessed are two words that are used a lot in the Judao/Christian world. It is a word that has a lot of meaning and a lot of tradition and I have been thinking every day about this word and my actions each day.
Merriam Webster gives several definitions but most of them are of a spiritual nature: to be held in reverence like the blessed saints, honored in worship, enjoying happiness and specifically for Christianity, enjoying the bliss of heaven, something bringing pleasure, contentment of good fortune, having a sacred nature, being connected with God, receiving God’s favor.
The word blessing appears many times in the Old Testament. It is used to describe God bestowing favor, riches, success, and honor to those obeying the law, being obedient, showing deference, and relying on God and God’s direction. Within the Torah there are blessings for many activities and occasions - Blessings of Enjoyment, Blessings for Commandments, Blessings of Experience. As the Fiddler on the Roof says in the musical, there is basically a blessing for everything.
The blessing was a public declaration of a favored status with God. It gave a power for prosperity and success and served as a guide and motivation to live a life within the blessing.
We also see examples of blessing by the Father to the Son in the Torah. Abraham, Issac and Jacob gave blessings to their children and grandchildren. Blessings were stolen and the loss of a blessing was a curse to the family. Often the blessing were words of encouragement and prophetic words about their future as long as they followed Yahweh. They often envisioned a future where those who blessed their offspring would be blessed and those who cursed their offspring would be cursed. This is similar to God’s promise to Abraham in Genesis 12:3. It indicates the idea that God has chosen this man to exercise God’s supernatural power in their world. The blessing from the patriarch also indicated the offspring’s superiority over others in the family. A lot of the value of the blessing was in terms of inheritance and land. This was the way to ensure the practical matter of estate planning and clearly indicating where assets and land would carry forward.
The New Testament and those practicing Christianity use the words blessed and blessing often. It quite possibly are two of the most frequently used words in the Christian’s vocabulary. “Have a blessed day,” “blessed to be a blessing,”, “God bless you” bless God with all my soul are just a few of the ways we put it to use. Many of our praise songs are songs of blessing to God for God’s care, love and power in our lives and the world. We give a blessing before meals thanking God for this food and the abundance given to us. Some people think of blessed as a spiritual term for “good fortune,” like when we receive something good, the desired outcome, or an exceptional comfort. It’s even common among unbelievers to describe themselves as “blessed.” We hear these words often.
The word blessed in the New Testament is derived from the Greek term makarios, which means “fortunate,” “happy,” “enlarged,” or “lengthy.” Makarios is to define the kind of happiness that comes from receiving favor from God. Consequently, blessed can also be translated “favored.” In the New Testament, it usually carries the meaning of being “blessed by God.” As in the case of Mary, the mother of Jesus, who was “blessed among women” (Luke 1:42–45, 48), it was the Lord God who had blessed and favored her.
While material blessings are certainly included in God’s favor, there is a much broader understanding of the word blessed in the New Testament.
Jesus uses the word blessed most profoundly in the beatitudes found in Matthew 5:3-12 and Luke 6:20-23. Jesus used this term in the framework of the Beatitudes to describe the inner quality of a faithful servant of God. Blessed are the poor for yours is the kingdom of God, blessed are those who are hungry now for you will be filled, blessed are those that weep for you will laugh, blessed are those who have people hate you, exclude, revile and defame you on behalf of the Son of Man for your reward is great in heaven, blessed are the meek, those who mourn, are poor in spirit, blessed are the pure in heart, the peacemakers and those that are persecuted. Jesus is describing this blessedness as a spiritual state of well-being and prosperity—not a worldly success and blessing but a deep, joy-filled contentment that cannot be shaken by poverty, grief, famine, persecution, war, or any other trial or tragedy we face in life. In human terms, the situations depicted in the Beatitudes are far from blessings, but because God is present with us through these difficult times, we are actually blessed by God in them.
Being blessed is about trusting in God’s love no matter our circumstances. As Romans 8:35-39 says
The one who is blessed trusts in God’s love, no matter what: “Can anything ever separate us from Christ’s love? Does it mean he no longer loves us if we have trouble or calamity, or are persecuted, or hungry, or destitute, or in danger, or threatened with death? . . . No, despite all these things, overwhelming victory is ours through Christ, who loved us. And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow—not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love. No power in the sky above or in the earth below—indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Blessed speaks of our inner state of well-being, the prosperity of our souls in Christ. Blessedness comes from unhindered fellowship with God. To be blessed is to experience the full impact of God’s presence in our lives now and for all eternity.
I appreciate and embrace all of these ideas of blessing and being blessed. They are comforting to me and I have had periods in my life where I needed to cling to them and hold on to their hope and promise to be able to take my next step forward. But most of these reflections have me as a receiver of the blessing or of giving a blessing to God for what God has done. What has stopped me in my tracks is to hear my mom talk about being the blessing to someone every day. I am going to give the blessing to someone every day by what I do or what I say? In a theoretical way it’s easy to say that. I do want to be a blessing to someone each day. But how is that manifested in my life and your life? Some days this has come fairly easily. For me it’s probably easier to do this with strangers and friends as I think I’m pretty good at being kind with strangers and look for ways to bless friends. But what about those difficult times – how can we be a blessing? How do we do this in the midst of a conflict? How are we a blessing with folks where we have deep disagreements? How do we do this when difficult circumstances are presented to us? Can I be a blessing to someone that I feel at odds with?
I have had to confront this many times and recently last week. I faced a difficult situation with one of our graduates from ESR and prayed about how to be a blessing in this situation. Sometimes, when we offer a blessing to others they will not accept it and that is ok. We can offer a blessing and it’s up to the other person to accept this and we don’t have any control over that.
My mom’s advice only encourages me to be a blessing each day to someone. I need to be in the active mode of looking to be a blessing every day and not focus on outcomes or success or favored status but what God is calling me to do everyday based on how Christ has changed my life.
I love the message in Philippians 2:1-8
1 If you've gotten anything at all out of following Christ, if his love has made any difference in your life, if being in a community of the Spirit means anything to you, if you have a heart, if you care -
2 then do me a favor: Agree with each other, love each other, be deep-spirited friends.
3 Don't push your way to the front; don't sweet-talk your way to the top. Put yourself aside, and help others get ahead.
4 Don't be obsessed with getting your own advantage. Forget yourselves long enough to lend a helping hand.
5 Think of yourselves the way Christ Jesus thought of himself.
6 He had equal status with God but didn't think so much of himself that he had to cling to the advantages of that status no matter what.
7 Not at all. When the time came, he set aside the privileges of deity and took on the status of a slave, became human!
8 Having become human, he stayed human. It was an incredibly humbling process. He didn't claim special privileges. Instead, he lived a selfless, obedient life and then died a selfless, obedient death - and the worst kind of death at that: a crucifixion.
As we enter unprogrammed worship I ask you to think about how God is calling each of you to be a blessing to someone today and consider these two queries-
Am I living in an inner state of well-being feeling blessed by God’s presence?
How can I open myself up more to be an instrument of God in this world?