IN THE WASTELAND BOUNTIFUL

I've been pondering the simple question as to whether being blessed always has to relate to one's pocket book? If you listen to some that is the case. But I don't think God views it that way.

Of course when it comes to blessings I guess the tangible does often get more attention that the intangible. Thus a new house would be something you could show as proof of a blessing whereas something like abundant peace or wisdom would suffer in the process. And we certainly wouldn't feel a blessed if we couldn't boast about it.

In my own life the peaks and valleys of survival have hardly made life have too many constants. On those occasions when our live has taken an upturn financially it has never been the type of blessing that came with any security. By that I mean, we can enjoy the blessing, but have no guarantee on how long it will last.

For example, we now own a home. After spending most of our lives in apartments, we ended up inherited my step-father's house. Later we had it replaced with a new house because it was simply to run down.

But while we are enjoying the change, the reality is that with the heavy debt load from the mortgage we had to take out for the construction and expense, anything could happen down the road to easily take away that blessing. I'm sure there are some with houses that are paid for or who have similar situations in terms of their house.

I only mention it because as with so many aspects of our lives, God grants us a blessing, but never takes us beyond the realm where we must trust to him for our daily bread or provision. For me knowing this is itself a blessing. But I'm not sure my wife would necessarily agree.

And I guess my main point is that I feel any true blessings from the Lord will be like any other aspect to one's live as a follower of Christ. It will bring us closer in our relationship to him rather than lure us away.

I think that is a fair criteria in my view. Because I have seen the times when some so criteria for a blessing is that you experience some personal gain. The only problem is that if the holy spirit isn't tempering the person's spirit in terms of the blessing, pride can result. There is truly no greater tragedy than when person becomes fill with arrogance and thinks they were blessed because they were more worthy than anyone else. Such arrogance never is a good thing in terms of how affects the person's behavior. At least not in my opinion.

Which is part of the reason to me that I see any blessing as one that only blessings by the Lord's will if it somehow inspires one to see him more intimately in the process. Perhaps if we understand it from that perspective we can see how in reality that maybe God uses some blessing just for the purpose. Hopefully we don't end up being so caught up in dwelling on the blessing to miss out on what is the real intended blessing in terms of our relationship with the lord.