Ephesians 1:1, 4-10 (NRSV) Blessed be the God and
Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every
spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, 4just as he chose us in
Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before him
in love. 5He destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus
Christ, according to the good pleasure of his will, 6to the praise
of his glorious grace that he freely bestowed on us in the Beloved. 7In
him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses,
according to the riches of his grace 8that he lavished on us. With
all wisdom and insight 9he has made known to us the mystery of his
will, according to his good pleasure that he set forth in Christ, 10as
a plan for the fullness of time, to gather up all things in him, things in
heaven and things on earth.
This Christmas season let’s think of moments that
have touched our soul and made a lasting difference to our life. There are several words in Scriptures
that describe such moments, and one of the most popular is blessed. To be blessed
is to have an inward sense of well being, a well being that is not dependent on
what we have materially, nor determined by how life goes for us (or against us),
and that is not disturbed by what we still need and lack. We sometimes describe
people who are blessed as people who seem to have it all, and that is what Paul
is saying to you and me. We have every blessing. To be blessed is to have an
inner sense of well being that nothing can destroy.
Do we know ourselves as blessed? Is being blessed a
reality of our soul that we enjoy and live with? Paul says God has blessed us
with every spiritual blessing in Christ, the lasting Gift of being blessed. Do
we know that to be true in our own soul? We are blessed because of what Christ
did for us. We are blessed by a Gift that we had absolutely nothing to do with.
Jesus came into the world. He poured out His love for us and was raised again
for us. That happened. That is. And we had nothing to do with it. We receive
this Gift or we resist the Gift. We resist with popular beliefs that we will be
blessed when we are out of school, or married, or get a good job and make
enough money, or when our children are grown and married, or when we retire.
But these types of blessedness depend on “when I … then I will be blessed.”
We can receive the gift and be blessed, or we can
resist it and keep trying to be blessed in some other way. Jesus was broken so
that our resistance might be broken and we could receive the Gift of an inner
sense of indestructible well being that continually infiltrates our thinking,
and our feeling, and the way we behave. We may not always experience our
blessedness, but the reality remains and returns again and again as truth to
our soul.
From a sermon preached by Henry Dobbs Pope
© Rhonda Hinkle Mitchell Broyles
