Blessing God by Being You

 

Blessed be God, the Creator of our Lord Jesus the Anointed One, who grants us every spiritual blessing in these heavenly realms where we live in the Anointed—not because of anything we have done, but because of what God has done for us. Ephesians 1:3

Yesterday, we explored how our life can be a blessing to God.  We do this not because God demands or decrees or threatens to smite us if we don’t.  Rather, we love God who first loved us.  You and I and all Creation is formed and fashioned in the goodness and grace of God.  We are mirrors of the Divine to one another.  One of the ways Paul suggests that we bless God is that we live out the gifts (spiritual blessings) that are uniquely yours. 

Growing up in the Midwest, I fed a steady diet of humble pie.  You didn’t think yourself better than others or get too big for your britches ~ which is a fantastic phrase.  In some ways the hymnal I sang from had the melody of a humble mumble, that if complimented or thanked the appropriate response was, “Aw shucks, it was nothing.”  In other ways, this devalues both the gift and giver.  If I stopped by with a Jello salad for you, with tiny pieces of pineapple suspended weightlessly and a tub of Cool Whip (just showing you that I am a true Midwesterner!) and then you thank me, I wished I would have been taught to say, “You are welcome” or “I love you” rather than to be programmed to say, “It was nothing.”  It is not nothing, it is a very delicious Jello salad.  To be sure, said Jello salad is not going to right every wrong in the world, end discrimination, and bring about world peace ~ it is just Jello.  But there is a lot of room to roam between nothing and everything, which is really where most of us live our life.

I tell you all of this to invite you to consider the spiritual gifting God has imprinted on you.  Like the example above, you might stop yourself from singing from the humble mumble hymnal.  “Oh me, I am nothing special.”  But please, consider that YOU are continually crafted and created day-by-day in God’s image with gifts for God’s realm.  This Tuesday in October calls all of us to show up as a God created being for the good of God’s whole world that God loves.  What might you bring to the potluck pitch-in dinner of life today?  How might that be a blessing to God, others, and yourself?  To show up authentically and fully as one image bearer of God with others, that I believe would be music to God’s hears.  May you and I sing aloud this holy song of sharing our lives with all creation today. Amen.