To Be Blessed or Not to Be Blessed...is it really a question?

Over the past few weeks, many people have reminded us with words of encouragement that usually contain the phrase “God has been good to you” or “God has really blessed you.” Now, it is tough to argue with the fact that God has blessed us, and there is no doubt in my mind that God is good. In fact, our child, like the rest of His creation, is really good (although I know that my good Calvinist friends would argue that she isn’t good at all, in fact, she is totally depraved and sinful, but that is another blog). But I sometimes wonder, are we only blessed when a delicate situation turns out in our favor? Is God only good when things are going good for us? Does blessing really have anything to do with what we have, or does it have to do more with who God is in this world?

Maybe a story to show what has led to my dilemma. On Christmas Eve, I decided to go home at midnight. Being in a high risk pregnancy wing, the stories that came out of each room were either laced with screams of agony or screams of joy. Everyone cried a child was born; it was eerie not always knowing if the tears were of joy or sadness. On the way down the elevator that night, I stood next to a man whose nephew who had just died. The chord was wrapped around the child’s neck. I don’t think the fact that it was Christmas Eve made it more tragic (a child dying stands alone in tragedy, it doesn’t need Christmas Eve to make it more so). I remember hearing the whaling coming out of that room, and the only image I can think of is of the Old Testament, where people wept and gnashed their teeth.

We were the only ones in the elevator. If I am completely honest with you, I can’t tell you how bad I wanted to get off that elevator. There was nothing, in my mind, that I could say or do to ease the burden this man felt. Yet, as much as I wanted to leave, I also wanted to acknowledge and validate in any way the pain and living hell this man was living. So I asked simply if he needed anything. I think my voice even cracked when I asked it. In some ways I felt I had no right to ask, yet it was unmistakable to me that he wanted to be asked, to talk about this lovely child that was born but no longer living. We ended up going for a cigarette outside the emergency room at Royal Columbian. He talked about how the child had so much hair when he was born; how he right away though it looked like his dad. And we just stood on the sidewalk in silence. Finally it was time for him to go back inside and for me to go home to be with my three children. It was so sad. He was returning to sadness and death; I was returning to a house full of life and pep and talking singing and laughter. We prayed together. We hugged. We never crossed paths again. He was checked out the next morning. I thought to myself today that this month we will take our child home, and this month his child was taken Home.

The interaction forced Bev and I to have a real conversation about Madelyn’s future. The day before when Bev’s blood pressure was so high and they were worried about a possible stroke or hemorrhage; it forced us to have a tough conversation about Bev’s future. I found myself having conversations with my wife that I could have only imagined. But over the past few weeks, I have thought about Christmas Eve and that conversation with that man and about the blank stares we gave each other when they put padding on Bev’s bed rails in case she started to have a seizure.

Can I honestly think that God has blessed me more, that God has been “better” to me; that God’s goodness has shined down on our house a little more than his. That seems like playing with theological fire. Our tendency is to associate God’s goodness and blessings with us receiving something. But what did that man’s family receive? Was God not good to them? Did God stop blessing them? Was God punishing them? Could I really believe in a God that would do that? (And yes, I know, there are countless stories in the OT where it is so, and I struggle with that God).

Maybe what we need to realize is that the blessing that comes from God is that Christ has shown us a better way, to live lives of justice and compassion and love and forgiveness, and that in doing so, we are that living blessing to others; and maybe that blessing is what allows us to become closer to Him through the working of that Spirit in our lives. The idea that we are “blessed to be a blessing.” Maybe instead of waiting for that big blessing, the birthright, so to speak, God is around us everyday. The Kingdom of God and all its blessing are on display everyday of our lives, and maybe we are displaying them to each other. Maybe we need to think of blessing as more than winning a game (God really blessed you guys when you played, but the losing team sure got screwed), or raising the last dollar for your mission’s trip (man, did God every bless that, he must’ve really wanted me on that trip), or because your church found a building after 12 years of meeting in a gym (God must really be blessing you—never mind the 12 years of being in a gym where He must not have realized our need to get out of there.)

Is Madelyn a blessing? Yes. But is it because she is healthy, or because she survived, or because has all her toes and she even had hair? I don’t know if I dare say no to that, and yet maybe she is even more of a blessing because through her we are drawn a little closer to Christ, that already in her few weeks, she has been blessed to be a blessing, just because she is…not because of what she has done, or is doing, but because she simply reminds us again of who Christ is and what Christ has done and why we need a Saviour.