You Shall Be a Blessing

I will bless you...

And you shall be a blessing (Gen. 12:2)

God called Abraham out of his native land (Ur of the Chaldees--modern-day Bosrah) to go to "a land I will show you," in order that Abraham, receiving the blessings that came with trusting God, could be a blessing to all nations.

It seems to me that God's call and Abraham's response is a summary for all of our lives.  God Calling, a little daily-meditation book I've been using for over 30 years now, has this as part of its January 26 entry: Pass on everything, every blessing.  Abide in Me.  See how many you can bless each day.  Dwell much in My Presence.

And in Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis has this to say:  There is no other way to the happiness for which we were made.  Good things as well as bad are caught by a kind of infection.  If you want to get warm, you must stand by the fire; if you want to get wet, you must get into the water.  If you want joy, power, peace, eternal life, you must get close to, or even into, the thing that has them.  They are not a sort of prize that God could, if He chose, just hand out to anyone.  They are a great fountain of energy and beauty spurting up at the center of reality.  If you are close to it, the spray will wet you; if you are not, you will remain dry.  Once a man is united to God, how could he not live forever?  Once a man is separated from God, what can he do but wither and die?

So there it is--what we were all made to do---to pass on the blessings we receive from standing close to, from walking daily with, from "getting into" God.  Yesterday, someone said to me, "We were discussing the meaning of life." Later, I thought about my own answer to that question---and this morning, it came to me that the closest I could come to that answer was this:  knowing our Source, we are meant to receive from Him with joy and to pass on what we receive with joy.

The writer of Ecclesiastes says this:  Sow your seed in the morning, and at evening, let not your hands be idle, for you do not know which will succeed, whether this or that, or whether both will do equally well.

Is this not our greatest joy---to know that somehow we have been a blessing to others, and that our children, too, are a blessing on the earth?  What more could we desire?