Blessed?

“God bless you.”

“Be blessed!”

“God bless the USA.” 

“You are such a blessing.”

“Thank you so much. Bless you.”

“I’m really glad you like our new house. We’re really blessed!”

We use the word “bless” a lot. It’s used as a greeting. It’s used as a thank you. It’s used as an affirmation. And, in case you didn’t know, it’s even occasionally used as an insult, as in, “bless your heart.”

In fact, odds are you have personally offered a “blessing” in one form or another to somebody in the last few days. It’s so common that sometimes I don’t think we stop to ask what we mean, what we really mean, when we do that. Take a second and look over the phrases at the beginning of this article and ask yourself, “what does the use of the word ‘bless’ mean in each one of them?” What is it that the blessing is actually offering or stating?

There are a couple of reasons I've been thinking about our use of the word “bless” lately. First, in the book Mere Christianity by CS Lewis (which our small groups are studying right now), he makes it a point to clarify what he means when he uses the word “Christian.” He gives a great example and explains why he needs to clarify a word that seems so obvious to people. The part of that explanation I find most fascinating is that if we are not careful to use a word correctly and intentionally, it stops having any real meaning or value.

Second, in the sermon series, we have been going through the Beatitudes, each line from Matthew 5 begins with the phrase, “Blessed are the…” The whole teaching by Jesus in verses 3 to 11 is couched in this idea of being blessed. That got me asking what Jesus meant by that. Did he mean “healthy,” “wealthy,” “special and important,” or that he was thankful for the people he was talking to? These are what we mean when we offer a blessing but is that what hemeant? 

No, I don’t think so. And this is where we need to pause and re-examine what it means to be blessed.

The Greek word for blessed in the New Testament is makários. You can look it up for a more detailed explanation, but according to Strong’s Greek dictionary, the general idea is that a blessed person is happy or fortunate because they possess “…the transcendent happiness of a life beyond care, labour, and death.” The rich, for example, are sometimes referred to as blessed because by “…virtue of their riches [they] are above the normal cares and worries of lesser folk.” Similarly, being blessed is subscribed to the “…happy state of the gods above earthly sufferings and labors.” 

In other words, to be blessed is to live above the run-of-the-mill drudgery, worries and concerns that plague and control so much of our lives. It is to live above it all and, in that, possess peace and freedom. I love this definition especially in light of the way Jesus promised blessings on his followers.

For Jesus, being blessed had nothing to do with being wealthy, having good health, or feeling especially grateful. Perhaps those things might be connected to being blessed, but they were never the source of being blessed. For him, when he was stating that people are blessed, he was offering the true freedom of his Kingdom for them. He was telling them that, yes, they would mourn, be persecuted, hunger and thirst, and the like but those things would not have the last word. There would still be the difficulties of this world pulling at them, but through his gospel they could rise above and triumph over them. He was declaring a gospel that offered “…the transcendent happiness of a life beyond care, labour and death” not because there weren’t difficulties in the world but despite them.

Jesus offers this blessing to his followers because "he has overcome the world," and in him, there is freedom. As the complete Word study dictionary of the New Testament describes, “To be makários, blessed, is equivalent to having God’s kingdom within one’s heart.”[1] That blessing is good news!

For the last little while, I have been thinking about this whenever someone says, “bless you” or I find myself saying “be blessed.” I think about what it would mean if I turned that offered blessing into a prayer for others or received it as one for myself. I like the idea that whenever someone sneezes, and I say "God bless you" what I am doing is praying God's Kingdom moves a little more in their heart. I am asking Jesus to help them rise above the things of this world pulling at them and find a little bit of “transcendent happiness” through him. I also love the reminder after every time I sneeze that Jesus is offering his blessing to me anew. That is definitely a blessing worth offering and receiving!

Next time you are out at the store, and someone says, "bless you" or even if someone coolly says, “bless your heart,” try and hear it as a reminder and a prayer. No matter what is going on in your life at that moment, you are being reminded that the Gospel is always there “blessing” you.

I would hate for the word “bless” to get lost in merely wishing someone well, being grateful for wealth or offering gratitude. Those are far too small of uses for it. It is a word worth defining and remembering what it means because the people of our world need to be blessed. And we are the ones that get to pray it is, out loud, in the grocery store, to strangers. How cool is that?!?

I pray you keep blessing people and, until I see you again, God bless you!

--Trevor Owen, Pastor of Spiritual Formation

[1] Spiros Zodhiates, The Complete Word Study Dictionary: New Testament (Chattanooga, TN: AMG Publishers, 2000).