December 18th: Bless
Submitted by Mike Giaquinto
Bless. The word is steeped in ubiquity. We ask for God's blessing all the time and in so many contexts. We ask God's blessings on our lives, our travels, our health, our food. We ask God's blessings on our minds, our hearts, and our relationships with others. We ask God to bless people when they sneeze. In the South, people even ask God to bless someone's heart as a passive-aggressive insult. How do we ascribe meaning to a word that gets thrown around so lightly?
As I pondered this, I was drawn to Chance the Rapper's song, "Blessings," a bit of gospel rap that samples the hymn, "When Praises Go Up." Some Googling suggests that the line "When the praises go up, the blessings come down" references Psalm 67:5-6. This led to an interesting discovery (for me, at least). The King James version of this scripture reads:
"5 Let the people praise thee, O God; let all the people praise thee.
6 Then shall the earth yield her increase; and God, even our own God, shall bless us."
The New Revised Standard Version (NRSV), the version more familiar to me, and likely to St. George's, reads:
"5 Let the peoples praise you, O God;
let all the peoples praise you.
6 The earth has yielded its increase;
God, our God, has blessed us."
In both versions, these praises and blessings are very transactional, but in different directions. In the King James, God blesses the people because the people praise God. In the NRSV, it seems that the people are instructed to praise God because God has blessed them. It's like the question of the chicken and the egg, with the ontological ramifications dialed up to 11.
As I've sat with this for the past few days, it's caused me to think about how I pray. I am constantly asking for God's blessings and I am constantly praising God for the blessings God has given me. In that sense, it seems both the King James and the NRSV are correct. God's blessing is not a transaction. The praises and blessings do not just move in one direction or the other. Rather, this cycle of praises and blessings is part of a long, never-ending conversation. Like any conversation, sometimes one side talks more than the other, but both sides are equally important. In this season of Advent, as we anticipate the birth of the Savior, my hope is that we all may sit in the comfort of knowing that God is listening, and the blessing of God's word is there for us whenever and wherever we are ready to hear it.