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Showing posts with label gossip. Show all posts
Showing posts with label gossip. Show all posts

Monday, May 15, 2017

Reflection on Abram, Vulnerability & Blessing II



“I will bless those who bless you…”  -Genesis 12:3
 
           Here is the other thing that I was thinking about in relation to this reading –to this verse in particular— what if it isn’t simply descriptive of how Abram became a blessing to the world –by leaving the security and safety of his homeland and his father’s house and going to a foreign land—but what if it was also instructive of how someone we turn someone from a curse to a blessing in our own life? Of course, it could certainly be both and most probably even more than that (i.e. the four-fold reading method), but with my own prejudices (or predilections) I tend to look for the paradox or the strangeness in a passage; that is the element that tends to call out to me and so I stumbled over the blessing of vulnerability in my first approach to Abram’s call.  But, ruminating over the passage I kept hearing this little piece echoing over and over again in my soul. And so, after a day or so, I began to contemplate whether the talk of blessing might also apply to how we look at others, how we treat them, how we transform we feel toward them. 
            And this all came into my heart as I was falling into a moment of personal failing and –if not sin, then a very near occasion of; I was doing something very much like gossip.  I was talking about someone who had been hurtful toward me. A person who frightened me even. It all started with me telling a friend why I wouldn’t be part of an event, and by way of explanation I brought up the event that caused me such pain and my need to avoid a particular person.  And if I had stopped there, my words might have simply been informative.  But, I began to elaborate on what happened and my own hurt feelings, and I began to speculate about this person and to shape my story to make myself the innocent victim and this other person a mean-spirited bully. 
            And then suddenly I stopped. Cut myself off. Sitting there, in that classroom, talking with a friend, I heard God’s words echo in my head: “I will bless those who bless you…” and I thought –What am I doing? I’m not blessing her; I’m cursing this person; therefore, I am cursing myself.
            It was probably that precise moment when I realized that this was not simply a description of Abram’s call to go become vulnerable, but also an instruction for how we are called to treat others.
I will bless those who bless you.
I began to suspect that this wasn’t JUST directed to Abram of Ur in 2000 BC. I began to suspect that, like most of the rest of the Bible, it contained a truth that was meant for me as well.  And I began to suspect that it had something to do with turning my heart around; with how to turn what seems like a curse into a blessing. 
I will bless those who bless you.
If this wasn’t just directed Abram of Ur, then it probably wasn’t just directed to me either. Maybe I needed to look at it from a different point of view. Step out of the middle of the “you-ness” of the statement and consider it from the other side. From this other vantage point I’m not simply the one being blessed or cursed, but I’m also the one doing the blessing and the cursing.  And reading it thus, I realized: God blesses me –when I bless others.  I don’t mean as a reward, I mean that the supernatural consequence of blessing another is to be blessed. The supernatural result of cursing someone is to be cursed.   
            For me the message was clear: Having a difficult time with someone? Stop talking about it and start blessing them.