Blessing

 

            The Lord had said to Abram, “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you. I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing.  I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.” (Genesis 12:1-3)

          These are the verses I mentioned yesterday. Since 2015, when I first started taking Dad south for the winter, these have been my “Leaving Erie” verses. At first, I was really going to a physical land I didn’t know. Florida? All I knew about Florida was that it was too hot, too flat, too muggy, too buggy, too sandy, and had critters that would eat my dog. And yes, it is all those sometimes, and sometimes, quite often. Zephyrhills? It’s a little more than a wide place in a highway, but you can hear roosters crow while you stand outside of the library, which is less than 100 feet from city hall, which is less than 100 feet from “downtown.”  I’m not trying to be disparaging of the town. It’s just what when I first went there, I was really going from my county, yy people, and my father’s household to land I didn’t know.

          I both wanted and didn’t want to give up my job. I hated it, but it meant depending on Dad, and degradation to the status of “unemployed.” It really was an end of my life as I’d known it.

          Now, as I prepare to do it all again, the sense of dis-ease comes again. Yes, I know the land where I’m going better, and my physical GPS will get me there. But there’s still that question of what will happen? It’s made a bigger question because of COVID-19. There are questions about what I’m supposed to do.

          For the first year (or so it seems to me) there is more at stake for me than going to a land I do not know and more than just my obedience to go. That’s been the focus for the past six years. “OK, God, I’ll go.”  I’m not saying that there wasn’t blessing, but that wasn’t the focus. Obedience was. Service was. I was busy, and I didn’t want to be greedy, because I knew I was blessed. Paying attention to the blessing would be selfishness. And I’m not really Abram, so the promise isn’t mine.

          And yet, I have to wonder if I went back through my posts and journals for the time periods over the past seven years, I wonder if I have been greedy and have sought the blessing more than I remember. Whether I have or not, this year doesn’t seem to be about obedience. It does seem to be about faith and blessing, or faith even without blessing, or about recognizing blessing. That doesn’t mean there won’t be obedience or service, but I’m praying that it will be more dynamic obedience and more being a blessing, and not about gritting my teeth and obeying.