Last night, lying in bed, saying my evening prayer of gratitude and blessings, I thanked God for every aspect of my life: my family, good friends, a home, the bounty of food we had all Christmas season. At the end of my gratitude prayer I said to God, “God, bless you.”
And I thought, Does God bless himself/herself? If God can bless me, can I bless him/her? And then I thought, Well, what is a blessing?
A blessing is a little piece of goodness that is freely, unequivocally, uncompromisingly, graciously, generously, unconditionally given as a bonus anointing for the self, the soul. It is grace, a tangible goodness that falls with love upon us.
A blessing can take many forms and be many different things to different people depending on our circumstances or our viewpoints of our circumstances.
We actually are inundated with blessings every day: the sun, a new day beginning, flowing water, gentle winds, a quiet glance, a smile, a little favour, a kiss, a hug; that nice thing a stranger does for you for no reason at all, that open door, letting me go first, sharing, seeing, hearing me, acknowledging me, complimenting me.
But we take so much of it for granted. We only see it as a blessing if it’s infrequently given, or given in unexpected abundance.
But I digress. If God can bless me so abundantly, can I bless God?
Yes, I think so. I can do all those things I listed above for others, for the world around me, and every time I do them in action or voice of gratitude, I do it for God. If I can take what God gives me and create something new and give it back as a gift in the form of a baked casserole, a painting, a quilt, a book, a song, a dance, I am putting a new blessing out there into the world. I become a co-creator. I’m sure it puts a big smile on God’s face, the face of the universe, every time that thing of beauty, that good deed, that positive action and energy is put out there.
We can cycle all our given blessings around to others and back to God. It’s called love.
So,”God, accept my blessings. God, bless you.”