One Salvation, One Blessing

World Wars, pandemics, floods, hurricanes, cancer... although some people do survive them, would certainly not be considered “blessings.”

Does good come out of them? Well, considering that to survive a tragedy can only be a good thing, then yes. 

But the question begged is this: 

What about those who did not and do not survive, regardless of whether or not they were and are people of faith? What about the inconsolable grief of moms and dads, sisters and brothers, when their loved ones never come back—from the Front; the house washed away by the river; the hospital; the burned down apartment building. 

The discomfort I have experienced with the saying “I’m so blessed” in any number of circumstances is that the same circumstance that blesses me curses someone else.

If I’m “so blessed” in a particularly trying situation that numerous other people are also going through but not doing well in, what does that make them? Punished?

When I first joined the ranks of church-going Christians, I, too, would say how blessed I was in various material situations. 

I’ll never forget when I drove into a parking lot years ago, as a new Christian, and snagged a very convenient parking spot. I said, 

“God is so good in blessing us with this spot!”

My husband, rightly so, immediately responded, 

“Do you really think God cares about you getting this parking spot?”

To his credit, that was the beginning of my taking stock of this “I’m so blessed” sentiment, which I believe is, for some people, an innocently-naive statement. For me, however, I came to understand it as a blind adoption of what my church was modeling, along with a desperate need to be affirmed—especially in my own mind—that I was a bona fide spiritual person.

In the years between my sudden questioning of “I’m so blessed” and my husband having a stroke almost two years ago, I put trying to figure blessings out on the back burner. I didn’t know what to think, so I just didn’t think about it. 

But the close-up-and-personal of going through the stroke with my husband, and together having numerous conversations on this concept of “being so blessed,” along with a close study of the book of Luke (which entails much about the topic of blessing), I have come to much greater clarity. 

Did some good come out of my husband’s stroke? Absolutely. The medical outcome could have been much worse. His mind is as sharp as ever, and he isn’t immobile like he was in the months following. All his vitals have stabilized and he is living a new normal with just a few setbacks.

But would good things have come out of his not having a stroke? Absolutely. And we’d be singing the praises of those “blessings” as well: freedom to walk miles and miles as we explored new cities, golfing with good friends, downhill skiing with our sons, cooking with both hands. 

Those are no longer options, due to the stroke. But had the stroke not happened? The activities of life in that realm would also have been considered “blessings,” just as people label his recovery from the stroke a “blessing.”

In my investigation into this concept and use of the statement “I am blessed” in the daily material occurrences of life, I found an excellent article that I credit for opening my eyes to the truth of the matter: and that is, to be blessed is singular. It happens right along with salvation and comes in the form of the Holy Spirit. 

Here’s the link to this excellent perspective:

https://blog.biblesforamerica.org/what-does-it-mean-to-be-blessed-by-god/

Salvation and receipt of the Spirit are, in my now convinced mind, the one and only blessing. Everything else that happens in life is exactly that: life simply happening.  But it happens within the overarching blessing—the coming of the Messiah’s Spirit to us.

So if I recover from cancer, great. But I personally, now, don’t see that as being any more blessed than the next person who does not recover. Because they too had the Spirit, just like me, and that is how we are both blessed.

I’ve shared this before in previous posts:

A man in his late 50’s, of exceedingly humble and quiet faith, was diagnosed with stage four melanoma. He fought it for a couple of years. He said something that transformed, for me, the meaning and application of the word “miracle,” the same way the word “blessing” is being transformed for me now.

He said, 

“The Lord is going to do a miracle. He’ll either cure me, or take me home.”

God took him home. A miracle.

That is how I now understand blessing. If I come down with cancer, or die in a pandemic, or lose my house to unforeseen circumstances—if I can’t find a parking spot and miss the concert—(even the Christian concert), I am still and always blessed.

Copyright Barb Harwood

Cast Your Bread Upon the Water

Cast Your Bread Upon the Water

(inspired by Ecclesiastes 1 and 11)

by Barb Harwood

In youth I cast, in seed, my bread upon the water, 

impulsively, to sow its devil-may-care,

thinking “this will never end…

I am so smart and invincible!”

The naive investments over time, “opportunities”—

They pile up—manifest as the School of Hard Knocks,

of “What’s it all about?”

of “What a fool!!

of “When did I leave my childhood behind?”

Other children, our own,
come along to coin us responsible,

to blind us too soon that we once, also, were children:

Young.

Vulnerable.

Often afraid—(and a bit mischievous, but only in a good way).

But we became steel-plated adults,

minted of concerns, reputations, gripes, cautions.

     (Our bread was out there, floating).

And then, those children—those whom we forgot we once were—also grow up.

Suddenly, we, who with our children’s leaving and life’s retiring—we, the washed-up and out-of-touch—

find our youth again!

Now, as waiting, silent shadows,

It is we who watch these young-becoming-old people cast their bread in seed

upon their waters.

We note their impatience and find it familiar.

We watch their curveballs, and marvel.

We sense their anguish and gradual resignation

as their idealisms—mere apparitions—dissolve,

leaving only frustrations birthed

in the clear day of reality.

Truly “there is nothing new under the sun!”

Having lost such innocence,

as all do,

they, as we, find it again

in crepe, lackluster eyes that look back at ourselves through the decades;

in shadows and crevasses upon staunch skin.

We find innocence there—

the remains of not having succumbed

to the first, and ongoing sporadic, “days of darkness.”

Welcoming, finally, the bread “after many days,” 

as it laps against the shore after equally many miles,

the message it carries is that youth and beauty— 

vitality and the beginnings of large hopes—

are meaningless;

they never—not really—bring about the intended, 

but only its shade, if even that.

So we pick up the bread that has washed back to

 “Banish anxiety from our hearts and troubles

from our body,”

We-the aged in body but truly old and young in Spirit, 

stand now on the shore of a mature youth.

As the bread meets our palms, 

its life thread ending,

it turns, 

once again,

into seed,

     to be cast upon the water once more.

copyright Barb Harwood

May 8, 2020