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WALKING 
      IN
THE WORD

'Blessings

are not

things that

we get

from God

as a

reward.'

by Rachel Cornwell

Genesis 32:22-31,
Romans 9:1-6
Matthew 14: 13-21

The license plate on the luxury SUV in front of me said it all: BLESSED. I guess that the personalized plate was this driver's way of thanking God and of telling the world that God had been good to him. But it made me think about the ways we define 'blessing.' It also reminded me of the story from Genesis where Jacob wrestles with a man (or is it an angel, or God or his own inner demons?) by the edge of the river Jabbok. After wrestling all night, Jacob cries out, 'I will not let you go until you bless me.' And he receives his blessing: a new name, Israel, and a wounded hip.

It is easy to say we are 'blessed' when things are going our way. When there is plenty of food and family gathered around the table, we always remember to say grace. (Well, we usually remember.) When we are healthy, when the paychecks are steady, when the kids are doing well in school, we know how blessed we are. Especially when we look around and see the suffering, sickness and sadness that others go through.

There is certainly nothing wrong with being grateful to God. As we say during the blessing and breaking of bread, 'It is right to give our thanks and praise.'

But what happens when things do not go according to our best laid plans? Does it mean that we are no longer 'blessed'? Or does it mean that we have to wrestle for our blessing?

I used to be a counselor and advocate for survivors of sexual assault. I regularly would get called to the hospital in the middle of the night to sit with a survivor for hours while she waited to talk with the police, have an exam and finally go home. Some women were homeless, some were prisoners, some were mothers, some were young, single women. No matter what their lives had been like, whether they had been blessed or not-so-blessed, the violation of a sexual assault changed these women's lives forever.

When I counseled survivors on the hotline, I would listen to them talk about putting their lives back together and offer them encouragement as they went through the phases of shock, humiliation, anger, sadness and fear, to reach a place of healing, empowerment and strength. These were women who wrestled with their pain, fought it and cried out, 'I will not let you go until you bless me.' They carried in their bodies and their souls the wounds of their struggle, but in the wrestling they found their blessing, their healing.

Blessings are not things that we get from God as a reward or because God likes us better than someone else. True blessings come out of faithful wrestling with suffering, from clinging to God, and from crossing those rivers when we are limping.

As Ruben A. Alvez said, 'Hope is hearing the melody of the future; faith is dancing to it today.'

The Rev. Rachel Cornwell is associate pastor at Bethesda UMC in Bethesda.