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A faithful presence of love in the absences of our city.

Count Your Blessings

count your blessings

Where are true happiness and blessing to be found? This is the question Josh posed to us on Sunday. It seems especially appropriate right now, as so many reflect on how terrible 2020 was as a year and how much better 2021 will inevitably be - as if by changing the calendar year we expect everything to be magically right with the world and we will achieve the happiness we desire.


In Genesis 49, Jacob’s sons were called together to receive individual final blessings from their father. While some of these blessings sound like what you might expect (prosperity, good food, success in battle, etc.) others are particularly harsh as sins are called out. And yet as Josh unpacked for us, the good things that were promised often came with implicit warnings not to love comfort too much at the expense of following God. Likewise, judgments often served as a means of God’s grace and mercy - as when Levi received no inheritance of land in order to be a tribe of priests with God as their inheritance. If these blessings are anything to go by, would you even recognize a blessing when you receive it?


More specifically, in this passage (and in reflections on my own life) I see two types of blessing from God. The first type of blessing is the obviously good things - a comfortable house, a job that pays well, loving family, or even good surprises like an unexpected bonus at work. I personally often fail to recognize this type of blessing because God has been so abundant toward me that I have come to expect it, or to see it as something I have earned rather than a gift I don’t deserve.


Maybe that’s part of why God sends the second type of blessing - the unpleasant things like sickness or injuries, job uncertainties, or financial problems. I’m not suggesting that we need to exercise a stubborn optimism to find the good in an otherwise bad situation; that gets too close to trying to solve our own problems by denying that they are actually problems. When I receive this type of blessing from God, it’s a gift that I never asked for or tried to earn in any sense, something that can ONLY be good because of the ways that God is using it in my life. And I may not even see the ultimate outcome in my lifetime - Jacob’s sons certainly didn’t. But those painful blessings often do a much better job of conveying God’s grace and love than mere comforts ever did.


While I was in college, I attended a weekly Bible study hosted by a family from my church. The leader was a man named Roy - about my parents’ age, with kids of his own, who had a heart for college students. Roy was a cancer survivor, but he had been in remission for several years. Near the beginning of my senior year, Roy went in for a routine biopsy and something went wrong with the surgery. He ended up in a coma for several weeks, and in the aftermath suffered some personality changes that made it very difficult for him to be around large groups of people, so he wasn’t able to attend church most weeks. That year, I stayed on campus for the Easter weekend rather than driving home. I was glad I had, because Roy actually made it to church. At the end of a beautiful Easter Sunday service, the pastor asked Roy if he would lead us in a closing prayer. He got slowly to his feet and proceeded to joyfully thank God for all His blessings - not just generically, but for God’s blessings to him personally. To this day it absolutely floors me when I remember it - I looked at Roy’s circumstances and saw a tragedy, but he saw only the blessings of God. Roy died a few months later.


So where do you look for happiness and blessing? Are you like a child writing a letter to Santa, expecting good things to magically appear? Or like an adult who thinks they have to earn good things for themselves, trusting in the willpower generated by New Year’s resolutions? Maybe this year it’s time to try an Impossible Prayer Request instead. When I seek blessing from God, I know it’s not something I’ve earned and I don’t have to put human limitations on it. I also recognize that the answer may not be what I want or expect - but I have the courage to ask anyway because I know that ALL God’s blessings are good.


Which brings us to the third type of blessing from God, the one the other types point to and help us to see - the blessing of Jesus Christ, the Lion of Judah, given for us. The true, ultimate blessing.

~Joanna Hinks