For many years I followed a disciplined scheduled daily reading of the Bible, but sometimes “discipline” can get in the way of learning. Sometimes you need to pause and stay with a passage or phrase or even just a word in scripture for a while, giving it time to show more facets than those that shine with first light. Sometimes you need more than an intellectual grasp of a concept. Sometimes you need to feel it in your bones, hear it in your ears, taste it on your tongue and stomp it out in frustrated walks in the woods before it moves from your heart up to your decision-maker. Then you can move on. This passage in Psalm 139 in The Passion Translation has been like that for me.
With your hand of love upon my life,
You impart a Father’s blessing to me.
This is just too wonderful,
Deep, and incomprehensible!
Your understanding of me brings me wonder and strength.
Where to start? It looks straight forward enough, but this sword tip has penetrated my soul and spirit more deeply than earlier races to the reading quota finish line permitted.
Christians tend to throw around the word blessing at lot imbuing it with their own definition. I’ve been trying to find a way to describe the word blessing as it is used here. Perhaps one way is to mirror its opposite. Benediction (blessing in Latin) means good speaking. It’s opposite is malediction – bad speaking. Mal at the beginning of a word with Latin roots means bad, sick, dysfunctional, evil: malady, malaise, malnourished, malice, malpractice, malcontent. Malediction means curse.
Bene, on the other hand means good, helpful, enriching, empowering, visionary. Compare words beginning with bene: benefit, benevolent, benefactor, beneficiary. When the fathers of ancient times gave their children blessings they officially gifted them with the recognition of who they were as individuals and imparted a vision for their future.
One day I witnessed the opposite. An event I would call a soul assault took place in the produce aisle. An adult publicly dishonoured a child by shouting (in much harsher words than these): “You are a huge disappointment. You have no positive qualities and will amount to nothing in life – ever.”
Every parent blows it sometimes. To this day I could cry when I remember one particular incident when I said something in fear and anger, which was entirely untrue, to a child I loved dearly. I have apologized, but my disappointment in myself helped me forgive my own parents for words spoken in frustration, or under stress I was too young to comprehend. But, you know, when it comes to pain, whether someone drives over your foot intentionally or accidentally, it still leaves a mark. Words have power and when you are young they can leave marks — often in the form of signs stuck to our foreheads where everyone can see them.
Have you heard this expression? A sweater is something you wear when your mother feels cold. I laughed when I heard this, but I know a lot of us can relate to this statement. Experience has taught us what it is like to be bound by another person’s priorities and tastes or swaddled in another person’s perceptions, well-meaning though they may be. My own daughter has been known to say wisely, “That’s your fear, Ma, not mine.”
How we long to be understood. How we long for someone who can help us understand ourselves. We yearn to hear good words about our true identities and true destinies. This is particularly true for people who had absent or emotionally distant fathers.
Someone who was an important and intimidating influence in my youth came to visit after I was married and had children. I was excited to see her and wanted her to be impressed with my choices in life. I longed for her approval.
“Well, I see you stopped developing your talent,” she said. “Tell me, what are your aspirations for your son?”
I answered, “That he will be free to replace my aspirations with his own.”
She was not impressed. She thought my answer was rude and flippant. That’s when I realized that seeking the blessing of someone who had an agenda and a plan for how I could continue to fulfill her aspirations would only lead to disappointment for one or both of us.
It did. One of the last things she expressed to me before she died a few years later was her disappointment that I had not lived up to her expectations. I felt like the child in the grocery store with a label slapped on my forehead. FAILURE. At the time it didn’t occur to me that I could seek God’s blessing, his hand of favour that ripped off the labels other people’s maledictions had placed there since I was a child.
VICTIM
WEIRDO
LAZY
UGLY
GULLIBLE
OUTSIDER
EMBARRASSMENT
WEAK
FAILURE
But my heavenly Father’s blessing changes labels.
VICTOR
CREATIVE
INSPIRED
BEAUTIFUL
WISE
CHOSEN
CHERISHED
STRONG
DELIGHT
Our Saviour understands who we are. That’s how he can say his yoke is easy. When we take on a yoke to work beside him we can learn from him how to move with ease. This is like the difference between losing track of time as we work in the creative zone and checking the time as we labour in the pits (unless, of course, you find pit work fulfilling.) He said he has prepared tasks and destinies for us that fit our makeup. He gets us! He understands us and cares like no one else ever can.
It’s not easy for us to get this though. Letting Him replace labels we have worn for years and displayed for the powers around us to read and exploit requires the daring choice of acting on what we do not yet see. Acting on what we do not yet see is called faith. Without faith transformation doesn’t happen.
The way God sees us and His thoughts about us can feel too good to be true. After all the years of allowing ourselves to be defined by people who are often also disappointed in themselves, words of blessing seem “too wonderful” and “incomprehensible.” Dare we actually believe the many ways God communicates and the scripture that confirms his kind intentions? Sometimes we are tempted to question if we are dipping into self-centered, self-actualizing, self-aggrandizement. Yet, as we begin to test out new labels and divest ourselves of the old, we find his good words – the Father’s blessing – bring us strength.
I bought a new album this week. My daughter suggested it when she came to help me when I had surgery for cancer three weeks ago. It would have been easy to smile and say thanks, but musically it’s not my style. She said the lyrics are powerful, and I trust her, so I bought it, downloaded it on my phone, put my earphones on and went for a wobbly walk.
This song has ended up on repeat all week as I physically march to it. In my last blog I wrote about picking the fruit-provision that God cached in advance in places we would find it along the journey. This song is like a luscious plum ready to grab and eat.
I am no victim.
I live with a vision.
I am who He says I am.
I am defined by all His promises.
I’m covered by the force of love.
He is my Father, and with his hand of love upon my life He imparts a Father’s blessing.
Charis: Subject to Change 