What Are Blessings?

A Story

Several years ago, I heard a story about a Greek widow who had lost both of her teenage sons to tragic illnesses and now lived all alone. She spent many years by herself, stewing in her own misery, and it was at this point that her faith in God was largely broken and she felt great difficulty and unease. How could God take away her boys so young, before they ever got to live their lives..?


She heard of a hermit decades later and began visiting him regularly. She was aware that he could perform miracles and was a man of great wisdom, but he always told her that she should just have faith and not dig around too much for knowledge of God's providence. Finally, after many visits and many rebuffs, the monk assented to fulfill her wish and answer her question on why God allowed her sons to die...

As he prayed, she received a vision: it was of two young men, who were clearly her boys in her twenties, except the younger one was killing the older one with a knife. The younger one then went on to marry a girl the two had been fighting over, but then killed himself out of grief some months afterwards, unable to live with what he had done. The woman wept and was deeply moved, being restored to God, but also feeling like she had gotten more than what she had bargained for: she discovered her boys were not the angels that she had wished they were, and it was a great mercy that they were able to die while their innocence was still in tact, and that they could thus make it to heaven.

Blessings include things withheld

We should be thankful for what we have, and what we do not have.

Many people chase after money, fame, prestige, many sons, many daughters, and many other things that they believe will bring them happiness. Maybe it is even true that these things would have brought them happiness, but it could be at the cost of their own soul, or it could damage another person irreparably.

God's providence is not knowable, but you can be sure that He will provide to you what you deserve and what is proper for you.

Those who have been given much and handed prestige and fame have much expected of them, or they have received it not as a blessing, but as a curse. One look at the messy lives of celebrities shows that they are people just like us, and sometimes even people who have fallen further into darkness.

Believe it or not, you can be blessed with poverty. With mediocrity. With a normal job, a normal house, a normal everything. You can be blessed with infamy, or even shame, because if it is the shame that keeps you humble and allows for your spiritual growth, it was absolutely necessary for  you to endure it.

We are given nothing in vain, nor is something withheld without a reason.