Day 4215 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

2 Corinthians 9:8 NIV

Blessing misunderstood

And that simply because we’ve come to measure everything’s meaning according to what we think it means for us. And sure, I can see where and why and how this has become so common unto us. After all, we’re all down here living what are lives that have each of them needs that thus require certain things that not only make life able to be lived but do indeed make living a life quite better an experience that it might elsewise prove to be. I mean, indeed, if we were all naked and starving and so dehydrated that we couldn’t see clearly then walking this world filled with animal and enemy without neither a shelter in which to steal, yeah, that would be quite the ordeal!

Definitely not much fun nor likely all that productive either.

But you see, that’s what I think I’m finally starting to realize as to the amazing simplicity to life that all of us are missing one way or a million others. It’s that God does truly provide all that we need from food to water to shelter. He ensures that we’re fed, that we’re clothed, that we even have the ability to know the difference between hunger and being satisfied. And yet we’ve all come to so overcomplicate our lives that we’ve even in turn turned the concept of blessing into almost a blaspheme.

For as far as we seem of the ability to see a blessing is something considered beneficial. It’s a matter or material proven in, well, whatever material matters most to us. It’s become, to us, this list if ideal ideas that we take before Him endlessly in which we list constantly all of these comforts that we contend we need if ever our lives to be whatever it is that we believe they’re supposed to become. I for one cannot count the number of things that I’ve asked God to do or give or even take away, all of them prayers I’ve prayed believing that His blessing was something that I could corral.

That it was something that I could control.

Because, well, as humans we like to control as much as we possibly can. It allows for this sense of superiority, of safety, of success even as all things that we’ve some sort of power over are thus all things that we can determine or defend or defund or define. And we see this very idea play out constantly anymore in whatever this is that we’ve all made of life. We’re all just down here these days vastly lost, and increasingly so, within this assumptive audacity that we’ve somehow the authority to undertake the redefining of basically anything so as to always ensure that everything agrees with whatever it is that we want it to be.

We’re all living as if we literally wrote the book on life and thus are well within both our rights and right minds anytime that we decide that something should be different than whatever it is instead.

Again, even doing this with the concept of a blessing.

Honestly, what’s the first idea that pops in your brain whenever you hear someone else mention the word blessing? To be honest the concept that I always considered was this almost fantastical place in which everything went perfectly and my life thus felt the same. It was the idea of a life free from strain, from pain, from even anything that I considered plain or boring or ordinary. It was basically my personal conceptualization of what Heaven might be what with more than plenty of such things as gold and glory.

Only problem was it all belonged to me.

It all existed for me. It was all there to help me and that toward finding this version of life in which nothing was hard nor ever then scary and rather I just sat endlessly basking entirely in these showers of everything that I ever wanted. It was like that idea of a king from way back in the day that had dozens of people doing everything from bringing him food all the time to holding those little fans to make sure he stayed cool.

Yeah, I was pretty much convinced that the entire idea of being blessed meant that my life was becoming closer to being my idea of perfect in regard to everything from comfort to companionship.

Indeed, I don’t know how many times I’ve asked God to help me find a relationship as I believed that such meant that I would have one more thing in my life that I, and most everyone else, considered a good thing.

A blessing.

And sure, relationships are a blessing sent from God as even in His Word we can read that he who finds a wife finds a good thing. But here’s the thing, not everybody gets the same blessings. His plans aren’t the same for everyone. His purpose is different for all of us. He has different uses for each and every person who has ever lived. And what I’m finally starting to understand might possibly be the most blessed of all possible blessing is the ability to come unto the humility that would allow someone to finally see the reason for their being here.

But the issue is that as I feel that I’m growing unto this understanding, it’s kind of blowing to smithereens pretty much every other understanding that I thought I’d already understood.

He’s even started changing my understanding of that which is good!

For, again, good, to me, it was always this thing that was good to me. It was always somehow beneficial to me. It was something that provided me with something I thought I might want or knew I did need. Good is this idea that leans endlessly toward such things as comfort and enjoyment and happiness and pleasure. And so, whenever I would read, or could have read (seeing as how I didn’t read the Bible for the first 20 or so years of my life), something like this I would ask it always to twist unto this conceptualization in which I was the one benefitted.

Yes, we think of blessing as being always of benefit.

And, yeah, most of the time it is.

But you see, it’s not always meant only for us.

That’s the part that all of us have, and probably continue, to mess up. And why? Because we’ve also misunderstood basically everything else in and about life itself. I mean we’re all aware of at least some time spent thinking about ourselves and what all we want for our lives to be and have and become and do. This is basically something that we’re all inspired to do from the time we’re little kids being ushered unto these fantastical beings that we’re told exist to give us whatever we ask them to.

I mean we’ve got the whole lineup consisting of everyone from santa to the fairy of tooths. All of them only there to listen to lists of wants, or desires for money, and to give us constantly the sum of everything we so desire under the sun. Or at least constantly to the extent that we start getting older and our parents prove unable to afford our rapidly changing Christmas wishes and the tooth fairy turns into a dentist and we end up paying them way more than the quarters we used to find under our pillows.

But do you see what I’m saying? It’s that so much of what we’ve come to know has always centered on us and our understandings, our confusions, our desires, our dilemmas.

And, well, we naturally then apply the same basic idea to the idea of our being blessed.

As I’ve said in plenty of posts passed, we often treat God as if some invisible genie in the sky who stands always beside some fancy vending machine punching the buttons for the things we ask Him to give us.

To us, that’s what blessings are supposed to be.

They’re our grownup version of Christmas lists filled with all the toys and goodies that we all but demand if we’re to ever even pretend we’re at all even passingly interested in being good. No, everyone can do good unto us first and then, once satisfied and satiated, we’ll do good in return. It’s that whole ‘what’s in it for me’ mentality. We seek first our reward, as is always expected in the form of something we like or enjoy or makes us feel good or look good, and then, after we’re good, we’ll then do whatever is asked of us by another.

But friends, that’s not how this works.

That’s not really even anywhere close. Because you see, God’s not a boss we can please in hopes of getting a raise. He isn’t a teacher who will give us stickers for doing well on math tests. Instead He’s the One who created life and thus retains the right to dictate how we’re to live it and that regardless of whatever we may or may not think or feel about it. Because God doesn’t need good performance numbers to please those higher up the ladder than He. He doesn’t have to show the school board proof of a positive impact upon a pupil’s learning in order to reach tenure and keep His job.

God has no needs. And, seeing as how there is none higher than He, nor has He anyone to answer to. He literally does whatever He wants to.

And yet what does He do?

He continues to bless us abundantly all while we all continuously fail to see most if not all of it. And that because most if not all of us are lost in this belief that a blessing is something that’s only supposed to make our lives better. And we’ve fallen into this nonsense because we’ve come to misunderstand what good really is. And we’ve misunderstood this because we’ve all confused that which is good with what we think is best.

And thus we consider God to be again that genie popping dollars into a machine filled with everything we’ll ever want.

He’s not.

Because, well, to Him want is a foolish concept. And that because He’s long been all but entirely focused upon the fulfilling of our needs. You see, His delight in ensuring that we’ve at first life and then all that we need with which to live a decent one. That’s literally what this verse here tells us. That He provides for us all that we need so that, having no needs, we can then carry on unbothered by whatever necessity may be lacking and instead pour our time and effort unto doing whatever it may be that He’s put us here to do.

Which, as we discussed yesterday, is something as simple as loving Him and loving those around us via the honoring Him and the helping of them through the sharing of the Gospel in both word and deed, all things then done showing everyone that we do indeed know the Son and that He has truly set us free and that, in lives changed obviously, we’re living our lives endlessly focused on what all we might do to love Him and love others.

Leaving obviously ourselves a distant and fading third concern.

But that’s not what we see in regard to how we’ve all lived our lives, is it?

No, again from the time that we’re children we’re engrained with this idea of looking out for number one, a direction so wayward and able thus to lead astray that we look up one day, or will shortly, to see that what was at first engrained in our brains has led to lives so entrenched in the idea that we’re but drawing up battle lines and lodging still accusations and rejections at the very God who’s literally still up there giving us all we need to do literally anything other than live as if He’s a bother.

But we can’t wrap our minds around that because, to us, blessings are supposed to make our lives constantly better. They’re these ideals that bring us endlessly deeper comfort or pleasure or enjoyment. Again, they’re something like these constant gifts that give us everything from gold to glory, all of which we feel as if we’re to use at our will and for the same.

They’re not.

Friends, blessings are things that God sends our way to either satisfy a need or present us with either an opportunity or the ability to make the best use of one.

None of that, outside of pride and preference always insisting to have their say, none of that says anything about making sure that our lives always become the better that we all but insist they always come to be.

And that’s my question:

How is it that we continue to consider that our lives still need to be better?

Speaking personally I have at this moment vastly more than I could ever need. I have a roof over my head under which exists everything that I need to run a business that affords me the ability to buy such things as clothing (of which I’ve a closet full of things I’ve barely if ever even worn yet) and food (of which I literally have about 20 boxes of just cereal stacked in the very same closet) and obviously shelter (of which I’m sitting in with a nice comfy bed next to me and thankfully the ac blowing cold air to keep these 100 degree temps at bay).

I have an amazing life.

And yet so too do I always find that I’ve always something else I want.

And this is where we run into our confusions in regard to blessings.

We think so much about all that we want that we think that blessings are these gifts that will bring us always one more thing on our ever-growing lists of lusts. But again, they’re not. No, instead blessings are God’s way of providing at first our needs such as food, water, shelter, clothing (you know, the things we can’t live without) and that unto our, once having all we need, then being able to turn our efforts and intentions elsewhere since we’re covered.

Yes, the idea of our being blessed is to make sure that we’re okay so that, once we’re okay, we can go forth and do good unto those who themselves might be struggling in ways or areas that we aren’t.

This is why He calls us so frequently to look after the widow and take care of the orphan.

It’s because, desires aside, there are plenty of those sharing this life that haven’t nearly as much we already do. There are those who are hungry, who are thirsty, who have no place to sleep in out of the heat or warm in the winter. There are those who are hurting and lonely and scared. There are those, and plenty of them, who are lost and have no idea as to what they’re doing, let alone what matters most in life. And yeah, we’re surrounded by millions who know not the hope that is given them in salvation.

And that’s why we’re here!

It’s to tell them. It’s to help them. It’s to be tiny, vastly imperfect representations of Him unto them who need. And we, who have no needs seeing as how we are fed, we are clothed, we are far more comfortable than we so often contend, we can then share our abundance with those who may be struggling.

We are here to be a blessing to others as He’s called us to be His hands and feet carrying Good News to those who may have still not heard and that by maybe doing something so simple as buying some extra nonperishables at the store or donating some old coats that we don’t wear anymore.

Friends, blessings have nothing much to do with us who’ve already been blessed beyond measure. What matters most in regard to our blessings is thus not measured in what more we might want but rather what all we might do thanks to His having already seen to our having all that we need so that we can then waste no time or energy upon worrying about something that’s already taken care of but can rather give that time and effort unto sharing what we’ve more than plenty of already.

And yet we still consider blessings as often only those things that would make our lives better.

Friends, our lives are already far better than we deserve them to be.

I mean, did you know that at one point in time they didn’t have air conditioning? Can you imagine that? I work all summer out in the heat and trust me, coming in after a day spent shoving around a lawn mower and getting all dirty and dusty and hot and sweaty, a shower and a bunch of holes in the floor that offer to force cold air through them for as long as you want is an amazing, amazing thing!

But it’s something we all take for granted because we’re used to it by now. Indeed, we’re so incredibly blessed that we overlook most of them every single day.

Problem is that some among us don’t have that luxury. And too that often they too are we overlooking because we’re usually busy asking God for something we don’t need.

What if we didn’t do that?

What if we were truly content with what we had? What if we could see all the blessings we’ve been given already? What if something so small as a quiet evening after a long and stressful day was allowed to seem more the gift than it so often is?

What all might change in life were we to become of the ability to see the idea of a blessing as something to be used rather than something to be only received?

How much better might things be?

Truth is that there’s only one way to find out and unfortunately is has next to nothing to do with us and ourselves.

No, for God has ensured that we ourselves have all we need.

Question then is do we spend our lives always asking for more or do we allow for gratitude to inspire greed to kick rocks as we turn our attention to being thankful and helpful?

Can’t do both but something tells me only one matters.

And I think it’s the one that involves putting ourselves and their wants last behind the opportunity and ability to do unto others. And I think that because He’s told us that the entire Law is satisfied in loving God and loving those around us.

And He showed us that our lives are meant to be laid down for the benefit of those around us.

Yeah, I’m pretty sure we’re not here to continue focusing on ourselves and asking Him to always do the same.

Hopefully that’s something we can change.

Soon.

Because, well, until we do we’ll neither realize how good these lives truly are for a people so far from good as we’ve come to be nor how much good we could be doing unto others with the abundance of good we’ve been given in these lives we’re living.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold