As I Walk….
I was out walking the other morning admiring the beauty of the snow and thinking how blessed I was to live in such a scenic place.
We really are quite fortunate. It is almost a Goldilocks sort of situation. Most of the time it is neither too hot nor too cold. We usually have enough moisture for our forests and crops. Occasionally something goes against us, like the FLOOD. Even with the enormous damage and displacement of the flood, again, we were fortunate that government was there to provide some financing to help get people back on their feet. We can only compare this to those unlucky, or to put it another way, those people not similarly blessed, who suffered great loss in the hurricane Katrina that devastated New Orleans.
For people of faith, I think we generally understand a blessing to be “God’s favour and protection.”
An expanded view would include a “gift from God that also bestows happiness.”
We often hear the proclamation of a new birth to be a blessed event for the happy couple. We smile at the celebration of church elder’s 90th birthday and attribute such longevity to God’s blessings.
However, in thinking of blessings, I wonder if we should think at all. From a practical point of view, blessings seem to fall on the just and unjust, the deserving and the underserving and the faithful and the unfaithful. God’s rain waters all gardens!
This arrangement, this distribution of blessings, does not seem to be a very satisfying human experience.
Consider the story of Job, in the old testament. As the story goes, Job, a faithful servant of God, seems blessed with those things counted to be of value to us- wealth, health and family. Through circumstances not of any apparent fault or shortcoming of Job, all is lost, and Job is left to wonder, why?
I have recently finished a book by author Harold S. Kushner, The Book of Job, When Bad Things Happened to a Good Person, in which his conclusion tries to make sense of Job’s anguish.
As I understand Rabbi Kushner’s summary, it is not so much as what happens to people of faith, but in our response to events, blessed or not. The author, I think, is more inclined to see the hand of God in our personal reactions to the unpredictable nature of life rather than in the event itself.
An example of a desired blessing that many of us in modern society seem to strive for is that one in a million(s) chance of winning Lotto Max or some such lottery. However, as many news reports have shown, this seeming blessing can quickly turn into a curse. It would seem our response to sudden wealth is more vital than the windfall itself.
Perhaps the greatest blessing that we can receive as a faith people is a relationship with God and the knowledge that whatever life brings, blessings or not, we are not alone.
Un Recipiente Vacio
Further reading: The Book of Job- http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Job+1&version=NIV
The Book of Job, When Bad Things Happened to a Good Person, Schoken, 2012
