Blessings: Be One, Get One

Bless—that’s your job, to bless. You’ll be a blessing and also get a blessing.

1 Peter 3:9 MSG

Two women stood before a display of prepackaged bags of apples at the supermarket. Each lifted a bag to examine the apples, pondering completely different dilemmas. One wondered, Will this be enough for my daughter’s sleepover this weekend, or should I buy oranges too? While the second woman thought, My kids would love these, but I don’t have enough money for both meat and fruit this week. She put the bag down.

The first woman saw her defeated expression, discerned the situation, and lifted a silent prayer for guidance in how she might somehow bless this stranger. Then she noticed the BOGO (Buy One, Get One free) sign. “Excuse me,” she said to the woman who was turning to walk away, “I only need one bag of apples but they’re BOGO this week. Would you like the other bag? If you check out behind me, you can just take it on your way out.”

Most of us are acquainted with BOGO offers at the grocery store, but did you know Papa God offers us a BOGO on blessings? Just look at today’s verse—if we do our job correctly as Christ-followers, we’ll not only be a blessing to others (and to our Savior), but we’ll also get one in return. Sounds like a terrific deal to me! Isn’t God’s generosity incredible! I don’t know about you, but I need all the blessings I can get.

The word bless appears over 500 times in the Bible and can be defined as “to divinely care for.” That plunks our heavenly Father smack dab in the middle of all our blessings, since divine means “from God.” Sacred. Anointed. Intentional. He wants to be intricately involved in blessing our hearts and helping us bless other hearts. Blessing others often involves Christlike characteristics Papa God wants to cultivate in His children (us): joy, kindness, generosity, and patience, to name a handful. Few of us can say these are our forte, but cultivation is what solid growth is all about.

It’s not always easy to bless hearts. But it’s our job and our joy, so let’s resolve to do it well!

Prayer: Benefactor of all blessings (Galatians 3:14), thank You for blessing my heart, and help me to take seriously my job of blessing others in Your name. Amen.