I am so blessed this morning. Those were the words that I said to my son. You see I had been out for a walk and unbeknownst to me dropped my cell phone. I didn’t realize it till my music stopped playing in my earbuds when I got far enough away from it. Simple right, just retrace my steps.  But it wasn’t simple because I walk early, it was only 6:35 am, and it was still dark outside. I could not find the phone and had to return home. I have the find my phone app so I knew if I went on my computer I could at least see where it was located. Sure enough, the app directed me to the correct location. I drove to that intersection and realized that when I was crossing the street it had fallen right in the middle of the crosswalk, in the road where cars were driving. I don’t believe in coincidences; I feel like God protected it and that was a blessing to me. You see it took me about 20 minutes to find it or maybe a little more because I had to walk all the way back home first yet somehow no one drove over it. They should have driven over it, but they didn’t. It had fallen in the perfect place to be protected. So, I recognize that this blessing of my cell phone being protected was a blessing from the Lord this morning. Insignificant to everybody else in the world, but it mattered to me.

The more I thought about blessings as I sat in my room doing my devotion, I realized that there’s a lot more to blessings than just those momentary blessings that we receive. Don’t get me wrong I am very thankful for those momentary blessings. Like the time my tire went flat at the intersection where I could get off the interstate, when I was at the road that leads to my parent’s house, at the time my father was available to come help me, where the tire shop was just a few blocks away and open, and they just happened to have the tire I needed in stock. You name it and I saw it completely as a blessing that day. But there’s a difference between blessings and being blessed. That’s what I want to investigate here because I think all too often, we get to the two confused.

Let me explain what I’m talking about. Blessings are the things we receive like nuggets of gold that are peppered throughout our lives. God, helping you find something that you thought was lost, protecting you in moments of your life that could have been devastating or much worse, receiving gifts and agape from people around you; these are all blessings.  They are the things that you are given that bring a feeling of being loved or thought of. These are the things I see as blessings and I would argue that they are not the same as being blessed.

There’s that catch phrase that people love to say, “I am so blessed.” We wear it on shirts and declare ourselves as blessed, but do we even know what we mean by blessed? Do we truly understand it in all its fullness?  I can be wearing that shirt on a day that I find out I have a disease or a life-threatening illness, on a day that I’m in a car wreck, on a day where I’ve lost the most important person in my life, or on the day my worst nightmare becomes reality and it would still be true. The truth is that even on the worst days of our lives that shirt would still apply for believers because being blessed doesn’t mean momentary blessings.

We are blessed not because of the many small nuggets of gold, blessings that we receive throughout our day and our life. No, we are blessed because Christ died for us while we were still his enemies. We are blessed because he reached for us before we knew to reach for him. We are blessed because he not only woos us, draws us to himself, and he keeps us, but he has promised us a heavenly forever as well. We are blessed beyond human understanding spiritually in ways that nothing on earth can take from us.  As it says in scripture, I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. Meaning the glory is our promised blessing and it is so great, that our present no matter how difficult it is, should not be considered worthy of comparison. It is true that we are blessed beyond the blessings of each moment and day in our life, blessed even in current suffering. Do you see it? When we as Christian’s wear shirts that declare that we are blessed, we are not declaring that everything is good and perfect in our life. We are not declaring that we don’t have struggles, heartaches, or even times of despair. On our worst day we can wear the blessed shirt, the same as we can wear it on our best, because every day, every moment we are blessed by the grace of God through the gift of his salvation generously lavished on us through the sacrifice of Christ our Lord. If we never receive anything else from God but salvation and eternity, we could still declare we were blessed. Pretty amazing when you think about it and completely absurd in the world’s eyes.  They cannot understand how we can stand in times of great trouble, still praise God, and declare we are blessed. 

I want to be careful here not to dismiss blessings, I feel like they are little moments of a reminder that we’re being looked out for or loved and they’re valuable because we need that affirmation at times in our life, those bits of hope. I experienced that incident with my tire going flat and everything being just right during a time in my life when I was not living in a way that I saw as right. I was making questionable choices and not regularly attending church. I still talked to God; I even did devotions; still I was willfully choosing to go my own way during that time. Yet God looked out for me and protected me, and the blessing of that moment still brings tears to my eyes. It was like he nudged me and said, “I’m still here and I’ll always be here.”  This morning with my phone it was a reminder that God cares about the little things once again. Yet even if I hadn’t received that blessing this morning, I would still be confident in God’s love for me. These blessings are just a bonus that we receive, above and beyond what God has already provided and honestly more than we deserve.  We should not mistake receiving blessings for being blessed though. 

One of my favorite musical artists is TobyMac. I’ve always enjoyed the songs that Truitt(AKA True Dog), Toby’s son, did on his album. When I found out that he had died at 21 I was devastated on Toby Mac’s behalf. I can’t imagine as a parent, and I don’t want to have to imagine that nightmare of losing my child. Toby came out with a new album since the loss of Truitt called “Life After Death.” There’s a song on the album called “Rest.” One of the lines of the song declares “My Child You’re blessed.”  Even after the loss of his son, even with the struggle that he’s been through in life, through it all he still declares that he, as a child of God, is blessed. Do you see it? Do you believe it yourself? It’s not about being an optimist, it’s about being a believer in the truth that we are blessed beyond each moment in our life. We are blessed beyond the struggles that we experience. We are blessed in a way that surpasses understanding. It’s not something to be flippant about, it’s certainly not something to take for granted because there’s a whole world out there who only understands momentary blessings and cannot live in this stability of the blessed.  They don’t have a rock that holds them steady in the storms of life, they don’t have a lighthouse to guide them when they get too close to the rocky shore. They are literally adrift trying to make it through this very difficult existence on their own with no anchor or guide. For them my heart aches, because at least I know no matter what I face that I’m blessed despite it.

I hope you feel this morning the way I feel, completely loved by God and yes, blessed. I pray that this anchor will continue to hold you steady no matter what the day holds for you. “Rest, take a breath, push aside the noise and rest your weary head, blessed my child you’re blessed.” (From the song “Rest” by Toby Mac on the Life after Death album). I pray that you’ll hear it today in a new way, and that you’ll believe.  We can trust in Him and hold on to the truth that we truly are blessed!

Scriptures: Ephesians 3:20, Titus 3:5, Isaiah 44:8, 2 Cor. 9:8, Luke 6:47-49, Matt 7:24-27, 2 Cor. 4:8-9, Isaiah 26:3, Matt 11:28, Psalms 4:8