Sometimes the blessing we receive is both fragile and mysterious. Your sick child is not totally better, but has come farther at this point than you ever expected her to come. Your husband is no Prince, but he's grown far more mature than the frog he once was. Your brother is gay - and that's a lot to get used to - but you really like his boy friend. Your widowed mother has decided to remarry, and you're angry that she could want anyone but your father, but you have to admit that she really seems happier and more at peace. Your boss will always be a jerk, but at least he's changed your job description, and you like what you're doing now much more than what you used to do. Your ex has decided to come back into the kids' lives; you're wary, but you know that, if she's serious, it could heal some of the pain and sense of abandonment in your kids' hearts - and yours.
If you mix the black of the blows and the white of the blessings, life comes in interesting shades of gray. No person, no situation, is ever perfect. But, then, neither are we. People undoubtedly see us as an interesting shade of gray as they mentally balance out our virtues, our vices, and our just plain quirks and neuroses. Aren't we glad that they stay with us, celebrate us, and endure us, which shows not only that they have excellent taste, but also how merciful they are! How humbling it is when we finally realize and accept that we give as many blows to others as we give them blessings. And that they choose to show us the Face of the merciful Christ.
Every person, every situation in our life, is a test - a test of whether we will grow in understanding and love, or shrivel into selfishness and self-protection. In every person, every situation, God is speaking to us, calling us to allow His Light of wisdom and mercy to illumine our hearts. If we truly see all in God's light, we can choose to accept whatever happens to us as a hidden grace, an opportunity to truly become a better, stronger, wiser, more compassionate person. For God lives within your sick child, your maturing husband, your gay brother (and his boy friend), your widowed mother ( and her new love), your boss (even though he's a jerk), and your once estranged and now perilously approaching ex. God lives within each maddening, confusing, infuriating, and somehow mysteriously glorious person in our lives, calling to us to come nearer as Moses crept nearer to the Burning Bush - so that we can find God within him/her and become breathless at the Sight of the Mystery.
Even when the blackest blows come - the death of a loved one - in the midst of that terrible void, God is near us in the emptiness, waiting for us to cry ourselves into a stupor, fall into the depths, and somehow be caught by Him.
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Yet Jesus, by whose blood we are healed, after this mightiest of blows, received the greatest blessing: his Father raised him from the dead. His whole earthly life, he trusted in his Heavenly Father, believed and trusted that his Father was telling him, "You do not realize what I am doing, but later you will understand." He used those words himself with his friends, as he knelt to wash their feet at the last supper, as a servant would. He was explaining to them that, as he had served them and cared for them, all the time that he knew them, so they were to serve others and care for them. He served them, cared for them, even in the midst of his own grief and fear of his impending arrest and death - for he knew it was coming - so, in the midst of all our bitter blows, we too are called by him to be blessings to others. In the Spirit and Power of Jesus, we can absorb life's bitter blows and become transfigured Blessing.
Life indeed comes in interesting shades of gray; each day we don't know if we will receive blessing or blow. Some days we receive some of each! Either we can live hunched over and bitter, awaiting the blows, or, in the Power and Light of Jesus, we can trust that we will be ready and equal to whatever comes our way. We can hear our Heavenly Father say to us, "You do not realize now what I am doing, but later you will understand." As we endure the blood, the pain, the tears, the sense of abandonment and isolation and alienation of our own crosses, we can choose to trust that for every cross there will be a resurrection. For joy comes in the morning! Illumined by God's Light, even in the midst of our darkest hours, we can still project God's deathless Light - and BECOME a true, compassionate, caring Blessing for others. And that is the beginning of our own resurrection from the dead.