Blessed

Are there days when you feel "blessed"?  Days when the sun is shining and all is right with your world?  We all have had that sense that the sun is shining on us and God likes us.  I know that feeling as well as most, but today was a day when you might not use that word to describe my day.

I wonder why we think this word "blessed" only applies when things are going well, when all is right with our lives and world?  If the word "blessing" only applies when things are good then what word would you use to describe your life when things are not so good?  Does "cursed" describe the other pole in this discussion?

Do you consider yourself blessed?  Do you only think that when you win the lottery, when you get that raise, when the tornado misses your house, when you kids get scholarships to college, when you're in the 50% that didn't get laid off from work?  

Let me frame these questions in a different way- do our circumstances determine whether we are blessed or not?  And, what does "blessed" really mean in a fickle world like this anyway?  

This whole discussion was the theme of the book of Job.  It was a hotly debated topic for Job's friends.  Job must have done something wrong because God is not "blessing him" any longer (their words, not mine), but what if blessing has nothing to do with our situation, our circumstances?  What if it isn't about good things OR bad?  I'm asking a lot of questions here on purpose.  I'm trying to unpack this myself as I reflect on the day.

No one would look at my day and called me "blessed" but I am, and it had nothing to do with good things OR bad.  It has everything to do with who I am in relationship with.  The idea of being blessed is woven into the very idea of knowing God.  It's a relationship that generates this word as commentary of a life....even when the tornado does hit my house, the car breaks down, the dog dies, I get laid off and lose everything.  

You see being blessed is all about who you know not how the day went or what you have.  I think we miss this too easily, I know I do, but this afternoon as I watched a nurse interact with my wife and I and heard her say (not is these exact words) "Boy are you guys blessed!"  I knew in that commentary from a nurse I didn't know that she saw in us the blessing of knowing God (and it sure wasn't because of how the day went!)  

Today and every day, good days and bad, I am blessed, and so are you, because we know God.  That's what "blessed" really means.