Blessings

October 13, 2018

In the old comic strip “Pogo,” Porky the porcupine was quite observant of Friday the Thirteenth. “It came on a Tuesday this month,” he would intone. Well, this month it came on a Saturday. Today. And nothing happened in this neck of the woods. You just can’t depend on superstitions! Perhaps I shouldn’t say, “Nothing happened;” we made great progress on my son’s bathroom remodel. Two small pieces of cement board and one section of green board, and we’re ready to lay the floor. The hard work is almost done. Taping and muddling the seams, laying tile (which I love to do), paint, and install toilet and vanity. The finish line is in sight, and the worst thing that happened was me bashing my thumb with a hammer.

That all being said, I am tempted to declare that I am blessed, but I am reading Jesus’ words in his Sermon on the Mount, and they are giving me pause. In Matthew 5:11-12 he says, “Blessed are you when they revile and persecute you, and say all kinds of evil against you falsely for my sake. Rejoice and be exceedingly glad, for great is your reward in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”

I can’t say I’ve been horribly persecuted, or even mildly persecuted, for that matter. I’ve had people betray me, curse me, and spread falsehoods about me, but I’ve never been threatened or assaulted due to my faith. Jesus takes one of the worst scenarios we can imagine and instead of commiserating with, and comforting us, he tells us to whoop it up, to sing and dance for it. Strange words, indeed, and hardly the kind of stuff we think of when we think of blessings. 

Our church is in the final stages of a Sacrificial Giving Campaign for the new addition we want to build, so there is a lot of talk about money in our circles. Whenever that happens, there are always those who get offended and make themselves scarce. “The Church is always talking about money,” is a common charge laid at our feet. I never shied away from money talk; it’s in the Bible, and our attitudes towards money reveal a great deal about our spiritual state. People who give generously are rarely offended when we talk about money; it’s the stingy ones who get mad.

Talking about money is only problematic for me when preachers imply that if people give, God will give back in greater measure. There are Scriptures that hint at such thinking, but God’s idea of giving back and blessing is not always the same as ours. Some people will give generously and have the bottom drop out of their lives. Some will give sacrificially and still struggle financially. Many people will do many good things and still be persecuted, vilified, and slandered. God’s ways are not our ways. 

Tonight’s reading from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount is not an easy pill to swallow, but if I am to be faithful, swallow it, I will. And even when the storm breaks over me, I will praise him, even through tears and gritted teeth. And I will bow before the greater Wisdom of God, and with the hymn writer Horacio Spafford, sing, “It is well with my soul!”