Blessed To Be A Blessing

What is demanding your attention?

Dear Friends,

“We are blessed to be a blessing.” This is a favorite phrase in Godly Play circles, the sort of thing we love to use to dismiss new storytellers, a sending message naming holy work. As a benediction, though, this is a phrase that stretches back almost to the very beginning, as we can see in this week’s short reading from Genesis:

The Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”

So Abram went, as the Lord had told him; and Lot went with him.

That’s it. That’s the whole reading, and it stands out to me that some of the most important things in scripture are remarkably brief moments. In fact, I keep encountering this reality in my classrooms, first with the Mustard Seed in Godly Play and then conversely with my ECC students regarding the logistical details of Noah’s Ark.

A few weeks ago, after hearing the story of the Mustard Seed, we turned from our treasured gold box to the text of the story. What we found was about three sentences summing up this beautiful scene and the immense mysteries of the parable.

Meanwhile, sitting with a group of upper elementary and middle schoolers this past Sunday, I described the specifications for the construction of the ark. (Okay, I may be several months into listening to Oh No Ross and Carrie’s podcast series about the Ark Encounter in Kentucky. There’s gotta be about 20 hours of content at this point and it’s still not done.) ‘Wait, the Bible has measurements for that?’ Yes, it sure does – and let’s not even get into the different types of cubits. All of which is to say that, wow, God was weirdly specific about boat construction relative to what might seem like weightier matters.

Why does this matter? As much as we emphasize different parts of the Bible in interesting ways, the attention economy – how much we focus on things – is often directly related to its degree of saturation. So when there’s a lot more information about something – a statement that is undeniably true about Noah’s Ark as a story, we’ll typically spend much more time on that topic. There are, for example, dozens of children’s books about Noah’s Ark, but very few about Sarah and Abraham. And that imbalance is significant because one of those stories, though it leads to covenant, pays a lot of attention to sin and destruction, while the other centers blessedness and joy.

Living Like Blessings

All of this begs the question, what does it mean to be a blessing?

We live in a world that doesn’t encourage us to think in terms of blessings – either those we receive or how we act as blessings. It’s countercultural. It’s a call to be of another world, to walk another path. But, returning to the attention economy, acting counter-culturally can mean feeling overlooked. It can mean doing work other people don’t understand or even know about. A lot of you probably have experience with that.

This past week, I had the privilege to write about lay leader and contemplative Emily Malbone Morgan for Grow Christians. Morgan is remembered on February 25th in the Episcopal Church but she doesn’t have the sort of flashy story that gets a lot of attention. That’s because a big part of what made Morgan a blessing was the quiet work of friendship and prayer. She wasn’t a martyr or a miracle worker but someone just like you and me. And, particularly for those of us in lay ministry, work that much of the world – even some of those closest to us – lacks context for, Morgan is a model of what it means to be blessed to be a blessing.

The Great & The Small

One of the lovely things about Abraham and Sarah and the way that they are blessed in their covenant with God is that it’s about the big and the small. Right now, as I prepare to turn to this topic with some of my congregation’s older children in two weeks, I am thinking both about how small each of us is. How small even each of our families are. And yet, how when we begin to number our community together, how great we become – how the Great Family emerges.

In preparing for this lesson, I’ve found stacks of star shaped sticky notes and I’ve got a plan – one that might be fun to do at home (and even more fun with glow in the dark stars and paint pens - ooh, I hope one of you does it this way and shows me the results!): I want to name the stars. One by one for each member of our families, biological and chosen. Now, biologically, I come from a pretty small family. My wife comes from an enormous one. But look how we are all connected. The Great Family is a promise and it is also a community.

May you make room this week, in the competition for your attention, to mind the blessings in your life, and to name them and give thanks. It’s much easier to focus on the material things that loom large – remember how the Ark takes up so much room, both in terms of text and attention – but are those the details we need? Reorienting ourselves, what will we notice this week?

Go forth, blessed to be a blessing in your work and in your rest.
Peace,
Bird