Blessing and Gratitude
Scripture ~ You are blessed when you’ve lost it all. God’s kingdom is there for the finding. You’re blessed when you’re ravenously hungry. Then you’re ready for the Messianic meal. You’re blessed when the tears flow freely. Joy comes with the morning. Luke 6: 21-23, The Sermon on the Plain
Spiritual Focus ~ “Gratitude lifts our eyes off the things we lack so we might see the blessings we possess.” Max Lucado, U.S. American pastor, speaker, and author
Breath Prayer ~ Inhale, One Path, Exhale, Love
Devotion ~ At first, the blessings Jesus talks about in today’s scripture hardly seem like the blessings anyone would like to receive. If we’re honest, we would hope for blessings with a more positive outcome. But to Jesus’ audience, who were mostly outsiders who had lost hope for a better a life, Jesus says, “Do not despair! God’s reign of love is for you.” The gospel of Luke’s interpretation of the beatitudes is one that addresses the human experience. Jesus does not deny the realities of the journey toward God’s love, but he promises God’s presence and providence even when in the near term it may not feel that way.
The beloved practices of giving and receiving a blessing date back to Old Testament times and are shared by many faith traditions. Throughout God’s story, God blesses and guides those willing to follow God’s path on a journey of love. Today we might say we are “blessed to be a blessing”. Being blessed has a sense of receiving something special from outside of ourselves. When we bring an embodied yoga practice and faith practice together, there arises a complementary dynamic of blessing and gratitude. Similar to a mobius strip where its surface winds on the inside and the outside of the loop, we give and receive blessings from the outside of ourselves while cultivating gratitude on the inside. Each feed into the other.
It is within us where the sacred Self dwells and we experience the incredible gifts of existence, wonder, and awe. Gratitude helps us to recognize the interconnectedness of all things when we pause to be in the moment and realize that any obstacles on the path to love can be overcome when we pay attention to the blessings around us. Stuck in traffic? Notice the baby waving to you from the other car. Is the weather changing your plans for the day? Consider the beauty in the earthly experience. When we cultivate gratitude by noticing the little things to be grateful for—blessings we already possess— we become a blessing to everything around us. This is the One Path, A Journey of Love.
