This whole thing about blessings is becoming clearer to me every day. I don’t know if it’s age or not, but life’s experiences do bring perspective to one’s outlook regarding the notion of being blessed.
I mean, haven’t we all been taught that it’s better to give than to receive. Kindness and goodwill should be characteristics of all of God’s people. Forgiveness and mercy should be staples of the Christian diet. The result is supposed to be a reaping, if you will, of untold rewards for life spent of sowing with no expectation of getting anything in return.
If that is what you’ve been told and what you believed, then you also know that life takes over and ruthlessly attempts to get you to believe none of that is true. Life teaches you at an early age that kindness will be taken for weakness. Generosity is akin to foolishness, something to be abused. Life and the people in it will use you if you let it/them.
Pain usually comes from an attempt to help somebody who doesn’t really give a damn about you. It is the source of a good person turning bad because people will find ways to protect themselves. We all learn to survive. Eventually, you learn how to navigate a world in which we see the nice guys finish last, takers succeed, what goes around doesn’t come around and cheating definitely wins.
Now comes scripture, with the notion that giving is always better than receiving. I thought about this and realized you don’t know what kind of mother you’ll be until you have children. You cannot know what kind of friend you will be until you have a friend. You can’t know the depths of a person giving you love until you find yourself head over heels in love.
You really can’t know yourself as a human being until you openly and honestly share your life with others, without fear, without restrictions or conditions. For a lot of us, this is a tough call because life has been so cruel. But remember only by being a friend can you know true friendship. Only by giving love unconditionally, can you know unconditional love. And only by being a blessing can you know what being blessed really means.
You can’t expect your prayers to be answered if they all start and stop with gimme. You block countless blessings, if your prayers only include and involve you. You see God should not have to ask what have you done for Him lately, when all He asks of us is to recognize we are all made in His image. “Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord.” John 12:13.
