As the Lord would have it, my kidney was a perfect match for a friend of mine who had been on dialysis for almost six years. That kidney is now in her body– dialysis, joyfully a thing of the past.
The incisions and super glue are still fresh on both our abdomens. In fact, neither of us has even checked-out of the hospital. Meanwhile, I seriously feel like I’ve won an amazing prize. And no, that’s not the pain meds talking!
For my entire life, I’ve enjoyed good health. Never once have I worried about organ failure or whether or not I could participate in an activity for health reasons. And I was oblivious. In the rare instance someone would comment on my health, I would say the same thing most people probably say: “I’m just blessed!”
The problem with that view, though, is that if good health or long life is a blessing from God, then those who don’t enjoy those things are, by that standard, not blessed. Blessings are things we believe God wants to give us– things He is waiting to give us if He hasn’t already. And I know far too many people who’s lives of genuine faith in Christ were racked by devastating and debilitating health prognoses, or tragically cut short. A long list of examples are a glaring and massively important part of the history of our faith, right up to our Savior Himself.
If we’re being honest, none of us are going to avoid health complications in our lives. Death is literally the only guaranteed event that every one of us will experience, and it’ll always feel like the wrong time when that event takes place. So if our belief is that God wants each of us to have a long and healthy life, then we’re quite simply setting Him up to fail us. That’s a red flag, don’t you think? God’s perfection is one of the most important characteristics about Him, which means the moment He becomes imperfect because of some expectation we’ve put on Him, we’re the ones who are out of step and it’s up to us to change our expectation of what He wants for us rather than God changing to accommodate our wishes. We must be the ones to accept that our ideas of what blessings are– and what they’re for in the first place– have followed the path of our broken world, becoming incredibly self-focused and in need of redemption.
Like most things in need of redemption, it’s not that we’re 100% wrong about blessings. It’s just that it’s become out of balance and missing important perspective. It’s another chapter in the larger lesson I’ve been learning about how loosely and mindlessly we throw this word around to describe things. Blessings have become more about things we want for ourselves instead of what God has actually promised to us. They seem to be defined more by what our culture calls “good” or “bad” from it’s own perspective (another red flag).
If what the Bible says is true, then God does not provide for us or act on our behalf merely to make our lives painless, comfortable and convenient. He’s not a vending machine, a money tree, or a guaranteed formula for healing. His existence isn’t focused on making us great, but rather helping us see how great He is. Ezekiel 20 pops all kinds of privilege bubbles for us in that regard, and I challenge you to read it. I’ve truly come to love that text so much because it’s so much more of a consistent and accurate depiction of God’s motive than most of what I hear from Christians these days.
God certainly hasn’t been a formula for healing to my friend, who’s endured more than just kidney disease ever since she was a little girl. If she had been holding this expectation for God, she would’ve had good reason to believe He was at best ignoring her, and at worst, actively cursing her. Even now, with a functional kidney nesting itself in her body, she will continue to battle against other health complications. Her health routine is gaining a lifetime supply of anti-rejection meds and must still abide by some remaining limitations.
Blessings have to be something every believer can expect to experience as a result of God’s perfect, eternally-based faithfulness. That means if we can’t join hands with believers living in modern Iran or North Korea, or in Nero’s Rome back in the first century, and relate to each other’s blessings, then we’re not talking about real blessings.
We also must acknowledge that blessings from God will never be disconnected from the Greatest Commandment. If we’ve been commanded to love God more than anything else, including ourselves, why would God send anything into our lives for any other reason but to help us obey this? Why are we so quick to call stockpiles of money a blessing when Jesus so explicitly warned us about the problems and temptations such a thing would cause in our relationship with Him? Again, it’s not that all of what we believe is wrong– just incomplete.
From that vantage point, and with the help of numerous scriptural examples including the Parable of the Talents in Matthew 25 and Jesus’ comments on the man who was born blind in John 9, we can identify the crucial missing piece: responsibility.
Every gift from God is a two-sided coin. We know one side really well– that’s the blessing. That’s the side we like to display and affectionately admire. We’re also oblivious to some of these coins, like I was with my health, and we take the blessing for granted. But that doesn’t change the fact that on the other side of that coin is another characteristic of what God gives us: responsibility. Each gift is unavoidably paired with the responsibility to use that blessing for His glory and not our own.
Our problem is that we only like acknowledging the side of the coin that keeps things about ourselves. It sounds harsh, but I’m not excusing myself from this tendency, either. It takes a lot of discipline, which I would imagine is why there’s such a big emphasis on community and accountability in the scriptural accounts of the early Church.
I don’t write this to make it seem like we all need to get up and let our kidneys be harvested tomorrow. I admit, this was a pretty extreme example (although it’s pretty amazing how many different ways you can help, even without being a direct match).
My point here is that with this perspective of what God’s given me being both a blessing and a responsibility, my opportunity to use this gift to glorify His name and illustrate just the tiniest bit of what He’s done for us becomes an even more joyful experience than it was to only have health. It truly has made this gift so much sweeter.
So then, what has God given you? Have you been taking anything for granted like I was? What responsibilities does that gift come with that would let you experience it with the strongest sense of worship possible?
nikaō.life 