Blessed Are We

Took the dog out for a Christmas run today. It was definitely her favorite present and it gave me time to think. It has been a strange week, filled with reminders of the finite nature of this world and the thin line between life and death. It brought together some things in my mind that have been bouncing around for weeks now but not really gelled into coherent thoughts. Hopefully this will be coherent.

As God has been working on me in the past several months, I have had to determine what it is I truly value, where I find my meaning and purpose. While I have never been terribly committed to their teaching, this has brought a new awareness of prosperity preachers and a revulsion to the message they promote. So I want to raise a few questions, some from real-life circumstances, others just true to experience, to illustrate what I think are the shortcomings in this belief system.

If we believe that health and prosperity are the direct result of having the right faith in God, how do we comfort the college student who goes from healthy and happy one day to hospitalized and in need of a kidney transplant the next? What do we say in answer to her questions about the goodness of God when she has lived the Christian life as she has been taught it and now, with a recent engagement and in the middle of the Christmas season, life is turned upside down and she is forced to deal with her own mortality and the possibility of a chronic medical condition which places unnatural limits on her life?

If we believe that those who truly love God and give generously to his church will be given everything they need financially, what is our response to the 62 year old doctor who has foregone the country club and extravagant vacations to give to the poor and do medical mission trips for the last thirty years. What do we say when he tells us he was looking forward to retiring in a couple of years and spending the remainder of his life serving the sick, the poor, the broken and destitute in some of the most poverty-stricken regions of this world, using his knowledge as a doctor and his passion for Christ as a means of bringing hope to the least among us? How do we explain that thirty years of retirement savings have been swallowed up in one quarter of economic downturn and disaster and that retirement for him is now a pipe dream?

If we believe that we really can have our best life now, how do we face a father and his children who have had to say goodbye to their beloved wife and mother on Christmas Day, as she finally was not able to win the battle with cancer. Is there comfort available to them that won't trivialize the suffering that she experienced and the pain they feel so deeply now? What words do we have for the sons who won't have their mother at their high school graduations, to the daughter whose mother will not be here to help plan her wedding, to the husband who will someday hold grandchildren and feel deep sorrow that she cannot be with him to experience this unique and remarkable joy?

Jesus told us that in this world we would face trials of many kinds, that there would be suffering. This wasn't some promise to get us excited to test our mettle against the hardships of life; it wasn't a threat to keep us from stepping over the line and feeling God's wrath as a result of our poor choices and behavior; it is simply a statement of fact. We live in what can best be described as a war zone, where forces beyond our comprehension are at work to bring us into submission and destroy us, while God is meeting them at every turn and fighting on our behalf. Our world is at war and in war, there is suffering. It seems that the greatest pain in war is experienced by those who survive. For those who die while fighting, the war is over. The ones who live through the death and destruction carry scars that remain throughout their lives and the everyday events of human existence can often touch the sensitive spots of those scars and bring great pain from out of the blue. So how dare we make light of the war, the suffering, the scars and pain that others carry with them by implying that if they somehow had only fought their war better, they wouldn't be suffering like this today? Where do we find support for this distorted view of life?

Perhaps the best answer to these difficult questions is in Gabriel's greeting to Mary: "Fear not Mary, the Lord is with you. Blessed are you among women." You see, we have misconstrued God's blessing for American benefits. The real message of Christmas, the true meaning of the kingdom is that the blessing is the presence. While I can't prove this with any linguistic study of ancient texts, it does seem consistent with the pattern of scripture: the blessing of God is that He is with us, not that He gives us stuff. And if that truly is the point of the blessing, it is perfectly rational to say, "Fear not my friends--in sickness and in health, in life and in death, in prosperity and poverty--God is with you. Blessed are you."

Merry Christmas. Jesus is Emmanuel. God is with us. Blessed are we.