Only So Much Good to Go Around?

Or a Better way to think of Blessing

I think there are at least two ways we tend to misread the idea of blessing.

One is loud and obnoxious. It tells us that if God is good, then the evidence should show up in visible, measurable success. Health and wealth, (whatever that means) but fundamentally a life that is, in some tangible sense, ahead of everyone else around us. Call it the prosperity gospel if you want, or just call it what it is, a way of confusing God’s blessing with material increase.

For me, that is obviously inconsistent with the message of Jesus who famously had nowhere to lay his head (Mt 8:20).

The other way is quieter, but no less insidious. It rejects prosperity as a frame for the world and instead assumes there isn’t ever enough to go around…

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