When Churchy People Toss Around, “Bless You”. What’s Blessing?

Far from a golden chariot, on four wheels, I’m rolled out from the hospital. Husband waits with the door of our car open, my prince charming in every sense.

And with groggy words, I turn as I lift myself from those wheels, after asking the lady pushing me, about her life, children, work, and job fulfillment.

And then almost non-nonchalantly, the words slip from me as I climb into our vehicle…“Thank you. God Bless you”.

I am not usually into “hyper” spiritual speaking, Christian-ese, or talking like I am some nun out of a convent, Holier than many…

But the words in and of themselves didn’t confound, as much as the response I received; furrowed eye-brows, down turned eyes, and confusion rippling down this lady I’d only recently met.

I recover days later. Out of the blue, my husband and I start discussing the meaning of, “blessing”.

“I sometimes think we associate ‘blessing’ with material prosperity, when God means ‘blessings’, he doesn’t mean riches as much as he means giving someone what’s best for them.”

His words made me think.

What is blessing? Do we just spew out, “favor” and “good wishes” without understanding the full Biblical meaning of what God-blessings are?

I dig with this curious nature, that fixaction on knowledge, the determination to find understanding and truth.  I find Jeremiah 17:7

“Blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord, whose confidence is in Him, they will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the streams. It does not fear when heat comes, its leaves are always green. It has not worries in the year of drought and never fails to bear fruit”.

And oh how good, a continually bearing fruit tree sounds, a life without worry, the roots of a life that doesn’t just bare fruit, but sends out roots by the streams that keep planting and baring…even when heat comes.

And don’t we all want blessing, and fruit, and goodness in a land of dessert and dehydration?

But as I search “blessing” further, I find blessing connected further than “good words” or any verbal command of “throwing out positive words” for the sake of another.

True blessing is rooted in following His goodness. It’s inheritance is connected to obedience and finding our happiness and contentment in God…not in self-centered living.

Dueteronomy 30:10 tells us, “if” you obey His voice, keep His commands, and turn to the Lord with all your heart mind and soul, then, the Lord will bless you.

And I wonder in a day of magical remedies, if we can forget that the blessing is first salvation, but then, “blessing” is often tied with an “if”, and “then”, making good things often tied to listening and obeying?

1 Peter 3:9 says to repay evil with blessing.

Blessing being not just some “reward tactic” God uses to manipulate people into the presents that comes after abiding in His presence, but “blessing” being a powerful weapon that slays the powers of darkness.

And do we as Christian often wait for the “blessing” before we obey, when God says, “walk out your obedience” and “blessings will fall like mana to those who have stepped into the desert intentionally for me?”

When those who obey are the ones blessed by influence and victory.

Yet, we don’t want “blind-faith” now-days.  We want faith that sees first, before we step, a knowledge of God that is concrete before we take radical steps to please Him.

And why is it we lack the blessing as luke-warn, post-modern, unconsecrated Christians? Is it that we have to see before we’ll believe?

Are we more like Doubting Thomas when Jesus said, “Blessed are those who believe and have not seen?” (John 20:29)

And why do we think trials are excluded from blessing? Could it be the difficulties are the “brick wall” we must break through to attain what’s waiting for us?

Could the B-Attitudes be the very behaviors proving we are truly children of God and not some orphaned substitutes?

Does He not say, He chastises those he loves? (Hebrews 12:6-11) Blessed are those that endure trials and have stood tested? (James 1:12)

Yet, we want a blessing that is not poor, or meek, one that suffers not, a “blessing” that isn’t required to love or have mercy for the weak.

We make up our own meanings, such as physical prosperity and call it “blessed” when “blessing” is surrounding God and following His goodness, not ours.

“Blessing” first is in Genesis 1:22 when God calls Adam and Eve to reproduction and fruitfulness.

Yet, on this bed with my womb just cut out of my chest, this barren-less women, digging through scripture to discover how it is I can “bless Him”, I am daunted at this meaning, start spinning…

Did I “missed” this “bear much fruit” meaning, created in the first declaration of the word, “blessing” from God.

Still, He reminds me, as the medicine numbs this aching, fruit can be bore from our hands too, not just through physical reproduction. He reminds me of Abraham, called to leave house, and city, land, and friendships to a place He couldn’t see….

And how it was in His leaving the familiar that blessing of promised land and children as man as the stars in the sky were given to Him….

Yet, we want the “blessing” without the leaving “self”. We want the self-producing gift of reproduction, when “blessing” is attached to submitting to His Lordship, an undeserved miracle only He can give.

And just like churchy people spout, “bless you”, like I did in my wheel chair…we cannot conjure up what “blessing” looks like, or “fruitfulness may look like for each of us”.

But what blessing does mean in one Hebrew definition, is “to kneel”.  The core word being “Barach”.

The word denotes an admission in our human weakness, and ascribing all strength to Him.

The example is when blessing, even Biblically was received, it often included a “kneeling” and “bowing” to the one with authority to “bless”.

We are blessing recipients. Therefore, we can be blessing dispensers, trees thriving by life-giving waters, able to impart and deposit simply what He has given us.

So, won’t we bow, like Edmund to Aslan in, “The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe”?  Won’t we confess that we are wayward, weary, weakened, incapable of fruit baring, led astray and ever tempted, until He becomes our Lord?

Won’t we then, rise up in His authority, as anointed, blessed, rising with the words, the Jewish use in worship most frequently, “ha-Quodesh baruch hu”, meaning, “The Holy One, Blessed Is He”?

For true blessing comes when we want Him more than any turkish delight, when we want His will, and follow out of obedience in reverent fear, and awesome awe, being love stricken, and fully submitted out of the goodness found in His glorious sight…

Won’t we know the bounty found in trees bearing fruit ceaseless because our life is like, “a tree planted by the water”, and all roots of life are founded in Him, and the blessing of life…

The Author of all great stories.