I’ve been thinking a lot this Advent season about the word “blessed”.
It all started with a post I read by Jamie Wright about the word “blessed” that quoted Inigo Montoyo from the Princess Bride: “You keep using this word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”
She wrote:
We’ve created a culture in which we measure God’s “blessings” in terms of dollars and cents, comfort and pleasure, wealth and well-being. So, if we’re happy and healthy and have everything we need, then we’re blessed, and we should thank God on social media. We tend to ignore the secondary message this sends to those who are unhappy or unhealthy, or for whom things are just generally crappy. Too bad, so sad, if your life sucks, you’re #NotBlessed.
The second thing that led me to focus on this word, “blessed” was that John and I were preparing to preach together on Mary, the mother of Jesus and there was that word again! In Luke 1 it refers to Mary twice as “highly favored” and then Mary herself says: Continue reading
