The story is told of a man with two pockets. One pocket has a hole that he never repairs. The other pocket has no holes, and if a hole develops, he gets it sown up immediately. Throughout the day, whenever he experiences something negative, he puts it in the pocket with a hole. But every good thing he experiences, he places in the pocket without the hole. Every evening, he empties out his pocket and all he has are blessings.Too many of us put all the good in our lives in the pocket with holes. We take them for granted, forget them, and don’t treasure them. Yet, all the negative things we deal with, our problems, frustrations, and worries, we place in the pocket with no holes. Then at the end of the day, we empty our pockets and find all sorts of problems and no blessings.
A quick look at Facebook and Twitter shows how many people today feel #blessed. In our social-media world, saying you’re blessed can be a way of boasting while trying to sound humble. College scholarship? #Blessed. Unexpected raise? #Blessed. Wonderful family? #Blessed. As Christians we use that term too, of course. We pray God will bless our family. We attribute our undeserved gifts to “God’s blessings.” We talk about ministries being blessed. But what does it really mean? How should we understand the blessing of God? For believers, is the blessed life synonymous with the successful life? Is it the Christian version of the good life? A loving marriage, obedient children, a vibrant ministry, a healthy body, a successful career, trusted friends, financial abundance — if these are the characteristics of a blessed life, then having all of them should translate into an extraordinarily blessed life. But does it? If someone had all those things, would they be extraordinarily blessed? Rather than turning to God, they might feel self-sufficient and proud. Perhaps a bit smug and self-righteous. After all, their hard work would be yielding good fruit. Moreover, they wouldn’t need to cry out to God for deliverance; everything would already be perfect. They wouldn’t need to trust God; they could trust in themselves. They wouldn’t need God to fill them; they would already be satisfied.
My desire for God is greatly fueled by my need. And it is in the areas of loss where I feel my need most intensely. Unmet desires keep me on my knees. Deepen my prayer life. Make me ransack the Bible for God’s promises. Earthly blessings are temporary; they can all be taken away. Job’s blessings all disappeared in one fateful day. Trials ground our faith in ways that prosperity and abundance never could. While our trials may not be blessings in themselves, they were channels for them. As Laura Story asks in her song “Blessings,” “What if your blessings come through rain drops? What if trials of this life — the rain, the storms, the hardest nights — are your mercies in disguise?” This revolutionary idea of blessing is also firmly established in Scripture. One translation of the New Testament (ESV) has 112 references with the words bless, blessing, or blessed, none of which connect blessing to material prosperity. (Matthew 5:3–4, 10–11), (Luke 11:28), (Romans 4:7; quoting Psalm 32:1), (James 1:12), (Revelation 14:13, 19:9).
There is no hint of material prosperity or perfect circumstances in any New Testament reference. On the contrary, blessing is typically connected with either poverty and trial or the spiritual benefits of being joined by faith to Jesus. According to the Key-Word Study Bible, “The Greek word translated blessed in these passages is makarioi which means to be fully satisfied. It refers to those receiving God’s favor, regardless of the circumstances” What is blessing, then? Scripture shows that blessing is anything God gives that makes us fully satisfied in him. Anything that draws us closer to Jesus. Anything that helps us relinquish the temporal and hold on more tightly to the eternal. And often it is the struggles and trials, the aching disappointments and the unfulfilled longings that best enable us to do that.
Learn to let go of all the bad and hold fast to all the good so that, at the end of the day and the end of your life, you’ll find yourself with no worries— just a pocket full of blessings.
