Addie (our five year old daughter with cystic fibrosis) had another clean culture last month: normal respiratory flora and normal vitamin levels. We’re all happy she’s had such good luck. And I do call it luck, not blessings or hard work paying off. I don’t know why saying, “We’re blessed,” bugs me so much. I know that all good things come from God. I also know that some Christians have terrible problems. The ending of Hebrews 11 (verses 32-40) tells of those who had miracle lives and those who “did not receive what was promised.” After all, Christ Himself said that the heavenly Father, “makes his sun rise on the bad and the good, and causes the rain to fall on the just and the unjust.” God does not bless Addie more than Rees (our twenty-two year old with cystic fibrosis who has had more trouble with his health) and I do not work harder at taking care of her than I did Rees.
I’ve knelt in our hospital’s chapel after a CF clinic visit with a kid and given thanks together; and I’ve knelt in there alone, having signed over a kid upstairs for an admission. Tears both times, the crucifix and tabernacle before me a physical reminder of life’s true love and pain. I turn to God in good luck and in bad luck through this journey from womb to earth and beyond. We all get through on our own trajectory and Eternal Love surrounds us whatever the lab reports read. That surrounding by God is his blessing.
I don’t think to be blessed by God means health and prosperity. I think it means that we are watched by our Creator throughout this valley of the shadow of death where we fear no evil because he is there to comfort us. We are blessed, then. When the lab reports come back badly, we are blessed; and when they come back clear, we are blessed. He is with us.
I did a little digging on the word Blessed and found that it is used in the Scriptures several ways:
- To praise God: Bless the Lord oh my soul.
- As a desire for goodness: Blessed are you among women.
- For sanctification: He took bread and blessed it.
- As a gift: Children are a blessing.
I did not look these up to be an annoying know-it-all, though! I needed to make sense of things. And my studies blessed me (haha, yes).
A friend of mine lost her son last month and a friend of hers wrote about the question of blessings for some and not others (Why Us and Not Her?). We’re all trying to make sense of things, aren’t we? I wonder if I bristle at reports of health blessings because of the reminder that some are not blessed that way and the unfairness of it all exhausts me. It is still a good word, however, because it brings our focus back to God, so I need to not bristle (Help, Holy Spirit!).
I hope and pray for all of us, my Sistas, that we rest in the blessing of God’s presence in good luck and in bad luck. May we keep our eyes on Jesus this week especially ~ passion of Christ, strengthen us.
