Blessing

An elderly woman went exploring near her village in Romania. From a stream bed, she pulled a 7.7 lb. (3.5 kg.) rock which looked to her like an average stone. Without much further thought, she took it home and used it as a door stop where it sat for decades. Then she died.

When Elena, her relative inherited the house, she wondered if the rock might be a semi-precious stone. She sold the rock to the Romanian state who had it evaluated by specialists at a Polish museum. The experts assessed this unusual stone as the "world's largest Rumanite amber nugget." It's now recognized as a Romanian national treasure worth over a million dollars! But the elder Romanian woman died having no idea her doorstop made her rich! (Note: Ironically, burglars had broken into the elder woman's house and stolen a few small pieces of gold jewelry but had completely missed the precious amber doorstop!)

Isn't this how we tend to view the fantastic spiritual riches God gives us in salvation?

Rabbi Sharon Brous writes about an ancient Jewish practice from Second Temple Judaism:

Several times each year, hundreds of thousands of Jews would ascend to Jerusalem, the center of Jewish religious and political life. They would climb the steps of the Temple Mount and enter its enormous plaza, turning to the right en masse, circling counterclockwise.

Meanwhile, the brokenhearted, the mourners (and here I would also include the lonely and the sick), would make this same ritual walk but they would turn to the left and circle in the opposite direction: every step against the current.

And each person who encountered someone in pain would look into that person’s eyes and inquire: “What happened to you? Why does your heart ache?”

“Because I am a mourner,” a person might say. “My father died,” another person might say. “There are so many things I never got to say to him.” Or perhaps: “My partner left. I was completely blindsided.”

Those who walked from the right would offer a blessing: “May the Holy One comfort you,” they would say. “You are not alone.” And then they would continue to walk until the next person approached.

This timeless wisdom speaks to what it means to be human in a world of pain. This year, you walk the path of the anguished. Perhaps next year, it will be me. I hold your broken heart knowing that one day you will hold mine.

Editor’s Note: You can read the original from Mishnah Middot 2.2 here.

Pop R&B duo Hall & Oates, hitmakers in the late 70s and early 80s, made their unlikely team-up thanks to a series of unfortunate setbacks, one of which involved an incident of gun violence.

Daryl Hall and John Oates both grew up in suburban Philadelphia and attended Temple University. Hall studied music while Oates majored in journalism, but both remained involved in musical groups during their teenage years. Hall was with a group called the Temptones; Oates was part of The Masters.

In 1967, both groups were invited to play a dance at the Adelphi Ballroom. It was sponsored by radio disc jockey Jerry Bishop, who promised airtime to the groups who played. Oates later said in an interview, “When Jerry Bishop contacted you, you had to go. If you didn’t, your record wouldn’t get played on the radio.”

Daryl and John were at the Adelphi at the same time, but didn’t meet each other until a fracas broke out before the show started. “We were all getting ready for the show to start when we heard screams—and then gunshots,” Oates said in 2016. “It seemed a full-scale riot had erupted out in the theater, not a shocker given the times. Philly was a city where racial tensions had begun to boil over.”

The show was canceled, but because the show was happening on an upper floor, the only way out for the musicians was to take a small service elevator. Daryl and John ended up standing next to each other, striking up a nervous conversation. Hall remembers saying, “Oh, well, you didn’t get to go on, either. How ya doin’?”

By the time they met each other again on campus to reminisce on their brush with tragedy, Oates’ group had been disbanded, so he joined the Temptones as a guitarist. Then later, after the Temptones disbanded, they continued their musical friendship as roommates.

But their partnership didn’t truly solidify until Oates returned from a trip to Europe and found himself in dire need of shelter. With nowhere else to go, John showed up to crash at Daryl’s house. And the rest is history. Oates said, “That was our true birth as a duo.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

Even when we don't get what we want, God knows how to use any circumstance to bring us one step closer to our destiny in his will.

Dieunerst Collin is one of the latest collegiate athletes to sign an NIL deal. The 2021 NCAA policy that allows athletes to receive compensation in exchange for sponsors who use their name, image, and/or likeness. Collin, a freshman offensive lineman for the Lake Erie College Storm football team, is now being sponsored by Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen.

It wasn’t only Collin’s stellar play that put him on Popeye’s radar for a sponsorship. Collin has been associated with the brand for a long time because, as a young boy, he was captured on a short video inside of a Popeyes restaurant that ended up as a source of bullying and ridicule.

While he was waiting for his father and brother to return from the restroom, a teenager began filming Collin, claiming he looked like a kid version of a local rapper. The video was uploaded to Vine (a defunct video sharing service), where it went viral. It was eventually turned into various GIFs and memes that people used for comedic purposes. Collin became known as the “Popeyes Meme Kid.”

Collin told CNN,

When it happened, we didn’t want to be in the spotlight. People were coming to my dad and saying, “Hey, we’ve seen your kid on this,” trying to make a joke of it. My dad didn’t like it for his kids to be joked on. But now, the fact that I switched it into a blessing, he likes it.

As a teenager Collin helped win a state championship for East Orange Campus High School in New Jersey, and was given first-team all-conference honors. At the conclusion of his freshman season at Lake Erie, Collin tweeted in affirmation from someone who suggested that Popeyes should sign the young man to an endorsement deal. A few days later, the deal was official.

Collin is now featured on a new video, on the official Popeyes Instagram account, touting his accomplishments as Collin says words of affirmation to his younger self:

This is where the story started, the moment that made us a meme. We didn’t ask for it, but don’t worry, little man, we didn’t let it stop us. We learned to lean in, we turned the attention into motivation, and the motivation into championships. From memes to dreams.

Possible Preaching Angle:

In his grace, God can use episodes of bullying or ridicule and redeem them to show your worth and his goodness.

When 15-year-old Sydney Raley clocked in for her shift at a McDonald's she didn't expect to clock out as a hero. After handing a customer some of her food in the drive-thru, Sydney leaned back out of the window to let her know the rest was on the way. That's when Sydney noticed the woman was choking on a chicken nugget.

Sydney said, "She was coughing like crazy, and I noticed she was gagging. Her daughter was in the passenger seat and she looked so freaked out. I immediately knew 'Oh, no, she's choking.'" Sydney instructed both her manager and the woman's daughter to call 911 as she quickly jumped through the window to help the woman.

Sydney said she took a Red Cross class at age 11, where she learned the Heimlich maneuver, and "all that training immediately kicked in." The maneuver didn't work the first couple of times Sydney tried, so she called on a bystander to assist. "We worked together and were able to successfully dislodge the food from her throat.”

Eventually, the nugget was set free, and the woman was able to breathe again. Afterward, the woman was in shock but very thankful toward Sydney.

Around the corner were Sydney’s parents, Tom and Stephanie, who were on their way to pick her up. Tom said, "There was an ambulance and a police car sitting there and I looked at my wife and said, 'Please tell me that's not something for Sydney,'" And sure enough Sydney is sitting outside waiting for us to pick her up and says, 'So this happened today.'" Tom said that Sydney was diagnosed with autism when she was younger. “We always worried it was going to be a challenge for her, and it's done a complete 180. It's actually been a blessing and a gift at this point. All the things we worried about never happened."

Among Americans with evangelical beliefs who attend a Protestant church monthly or more:

75% agree that “God wants me to prosper financially.”

41% agree that their church “teaches that if I give more money to my church and charities, God will bless me in return.”

26% agree that “to receive material blessings from God, I have to do something for God.”

Dr. Emily McGowin, assistant professor of theology, at Wheaton College writes:

When I taught high school, one of my favorite assignments was having my ninth-graders write their own Beatitudes. I asked them to speak to people the world might consider "unblessable." Here are a few:

-Blessed are drug addicts and felons, people who try everything but still buckle under the pressure of their past lives and can never get back on their feet, for even they belong in the Kingdom of God.

-Blessed are the orphans and foster children of the world because they are exactly who God wants in his Kingdom.

-Blessed are the homeless because the Kingdom of God belongs to them too.

-Blessed are the abusers who take out their anger on the weak, for even they can repent and receive the Kingdom of God." (This particular student was abused by a parent and removed from the home because of it.)

In his book, Paul Gould writes:

The writings of Pulitzer Prize winning novelist Marilynne Robinson are infused with a sacramental theology. Her writing helps us see and savor the divine in the midst of the mundane. In an oft-cited passage, she invites readers to consider the ordinary—in this instance water—from a new vantage point. In her book Gilead, the Congregationalist minister John Ames knows his time on earth is coming to an end, so he writes a series of letters to his young son. Ames shares a memory of an earlier time when he watched a young couple stroll along on a leisure morning:

“The sun had come up brilliantly after a heavy rain, and the trees were glistening and very wet. On some impulse, plain exuberance, I suppose, the fellow jumped up and caught hold of a branch, and a storm of luminous water came pouring down on the two of them, and they laughed and took off running. The girl sweeping water off her hair and her dress as if she were a little bit disgusted, but she wasn't. It was a beautiful thing to see, like something from a myth.”

“I don't know why I thought of that now, except perhaps because it is easy to believe in such moments that water was made primarily for blessing, and only secondarily for growing vegetables or doing the wash. I wish I had paid more attention to it. My list of regrets may seem unusual, but who can know that they are, really. This is an interesting planet. It deserves all the attention you can give it.”

Responding to a previous calamity, Colorado governor Jared Polis decided upon a practical, utilitarian solution. When a rockslide caused a giant boulder the size of a house to tumble down and gouge a huge chunk from highway 145 near the southwestern town of Dolores, Polis decided to simply leave it there. State officials say that taxpayers will be better served by allowing the boulder to remain as a memorial of the freak accident and rebuilding the highway next to it.

The total cost of rebuilding the section of highway, which includes a new section of guardrail next to the boulder, is estimated at $1.3 million, according to budget estimates. Taxpayers are expected to save around $200,000, which is what it would’ve cost had they decided to blast the 8.5-million-pound boulder into smaller rock fragments. The boulder has been dubbed “Memorial Rock,” because the rockslide happened on Memorial Day weekend.

Potential Preaching Angle: Whether from unforeseen calamity or serendipitous blessing, it is important to use momentous occasions as memory markers. These help us remember what we've gone through and how God was faithful throughout.

Bench player Skal Labissiere arrived in Portland, knowing that his playing time would be minimal at best. Yet, reflecting on his path to the NBA, he was not filled with anxiety, but gratitude.

Labissiere knows that he’ll probably just play a few “garbage time” minutes during a blowout, a far cry from the 20 minutes per game he played for his last team. But here’s his perspective: “Things like this? Playing time? Yeah, it’s frustrating at times, but … after what I’ve been through, believe me, I’m good. God got me to this point, and I still have a ways to go. I’m excited about what’s ahead here.”

Labissiere was alluding to the tragic earthquake in his native Haiti that he experienced as a 13-year-old. The quake caught him unaware on the third floor of his home. He eventually had a wall crash onto his back as he protected his mother from the shifting rubble. It left him unable to walk for weeks.

His family all survived, but they knew his dream of playing NBA basketball would be difficult if he remained in Port-Au-Prince, so his father found a nonprofit that might help a young man with Labissiere’s potential. Eight months later, he flew to the US to live with local resident Gerald Hamilton and his family in Memphis, Tennessee. The love and support from the Hamiltons gave him the foundation he needed to pursue high school basketball, then college hoops at Kentucky, and eventually the NBA.

Labissiere said the earthquake was an awful event, but he added, “But for me, God used that experience to open doors.”

Potential Preaching Angles: Because of God’s great love and omnipotence, God can create opportunity out of tragedy. Even situations that look and feel hopeless are still within God’s grasp of blessing.

The barracks where Corrie ten Boom and her sister, Betsy, were kept in the Nazi concentration camp, Ravensbruck, were terribly overcrowded and flea-infested. They had been able to miraculously smuggle a Bible into the camp, and in that Bible they had read that in all things they were to give thanks and that God can use anything for good.

Betsy decided that this meant thanking God for the fleas. This was too much for Corrie, who said she could do no such thing. Betsy insisted, so Corrie gave in and prayed to God, thanking him even for the fleas.

Over the next several months a wonderful, but curious, thing happened: They found that the guards never entered their barracks.

This meant that the women were not assaulted. It also meant that they were able to do the unthinkable, which was to hold open Bible studies and prayer meetings in the heart of a Nazi concentration camp. Through this, countless numbers of women came to faith in Christ.

Only at the end did they discover why the guards had left them alone and would not enter into their barracks: It was because of the fleas.

This Thanksgiving, give thanks to God for every good and perfect gift (Jam. 1:17), but also thank him for how he will use all things for good in the lives of those who trust him (Rom. 8:28).

In this time of declining home values and rising unemployment, in a time when many are facing physical and emotional challenges, there can be little doubt that such a trusting prayer of gratitude will be challenging to consider.

But when you feel that challenge, take a moment and remember the fleas of Ravensbruck.

And thank God anyway.