Blessed and a blessing

What does it mean to be blessed?

So often we hear folks say, "I feel so blessed." They might say this in thanksgiving for healing, a well-mannered child, a new job, good friends, or any of life's positive moments. It is good that we recognize these as blessings and not something we deserve or have earned.

However, it seems to me that whatever the blessing and no matter how superficially or deeply we recognize it as a blessing, we seem to stop with, "Thank you, Lord." In the Bible, though, blessing carries with it much more. In the Bible the spoken or unspoken expectation of God is that the one who receives a blessing should pass that blessing on.

In the modern vernacular, we are to "pay it forward." In Genesis 12, one of the first instances of God bestowing a blessing, God says to Abram, "... I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great so that you will be a blessing....and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed."

This is not God telling Abram that just because he exists he will be a blessing. Rather this is God's expectation of Abram. His job, should he accept it, is to receive God's blessing and then pass that blessing on to others through his life, his faith, and his love of God.

When we receive a blessing it does not end with us; we are called by God to pass that blessing on to others-to pay it forward, to share it, to pass it on. However we express it, God's blessing comes with a responsibility not to hold tightly to it or passively bask in it.

We are most certainly to give thanks for our blessings, but we also are to pass them on. "May you be blessed and a blessing."

- GENE LeCOUTEUR

Re-published from "spirit", St Stephen's Episcopal Church, Richmond, VA