Are we “blessed” or just blinded?

The beautiful woman in front of me glows with the love of Christ.  She is the wife of our dear Tanzanian pastor.  She is raising four lovely children and faithfully serving alongside of her husband in our small church here in Morogoro.   With her feet up on my lap I carefully paint each toenail and listen as she hums a favorite tune.  This woman displays true grace and beauty.  However, her rough feet, missing toenails, blisters and sores remind me of a life that is far from similar to my own. 

We had just spent half of the afternoon in her home and then the other half at mine.  My mind raced back and forth between the bleak contrasts. 

Her home: well-swept dirt floors, a sheet for a front door, a kitchen outside which consists of coal and a pot, stirring a pot of ugali while explaining their inability to afford rice.  I listened as Pastor and his wife talked about the terrible government school in which their children attend.  They fear for their children’s future, but there are no other options they can afford.  

My home: newly mopped tile floors, windows protected by two sets of iron bars, around the clock guards and a beautiful gate; freshly baked banana bread as we sit on our outdoor patio and the uniforms of our girl’s private school freshly hanging out to dry.  Our lives really couldn’t be more different. 

Okay, now stop for a moment. Catch what you are thinking.  If you are anything like most Americans, anything like how I used to think…your thoughts may have been somewhere like this.  “Wow, it just makes me realize just how blessed we really are.”  It sounds simple and true.  But is it?  For a while now that statement has haunted me.  It bothers me because that simple statement implies a very serious misconception of who the blessed in this world really are.  It’s a very dangerous formula.

I have things SO I’m blessed.  

They don’t have my things SO they are not as blessed.

I think as believers our worldview has been seriously messed up because of this lie. I believe it’s much more simple.

Jesus + Nothing = Everything  (btw, this is a title of an amazing book that you should read!)

What if tomorrow your story looked more like that of Job of the Bible (who lost everything he owned, his family, his health, his friends, his comfort).  If all you had left in this world was…well, Jesus.  Is that enough?

I think if we looked into God’s Word we would see a different view of who the blessed really are.  Maybe we would shift our thoughts.

“Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good! Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him!” (Psalms 34:8)

“Listen, my beloved brothers, has not God chosen those who are poor in the world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom, which he has promised to those who love him?” (James 2:5)

Blessed is the man who makes the Lord his trust, who does not turn to the proud, to those who go astray after a lie! (Psalms 40:4)

“Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.” (Matthew 19:24)

So, really…how are we gauging our standard of God’s blessings?   We are not blessed because we are rich.  In fact, we are all suffering from poverty, spiritual poverty.  Each and every one of us shares in suffering, this spiritual poverty, because of SIN.  It just manifests itself in very different ways.  In Africa we see it manifested through disease, government corruption, parentless children, etc.  In America we can see our “poverty” through consumerism, idolatry, self-obsession, a lust for the world.  Without Christ both poverties are equally hopeless.

 I never truly understood the words in Matthew 19:24 until I moved to Africa.  As the scales are (very slowly) falling off I realize that yes…the rich of the world (myself) non-Christian and Christian alike are blinded by what we see as our “blessings”.  In the often quoted words of C.S. Lewis:

We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered to us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased."

Maybe we aren’t so “blessed”.  Maybe our consumer driven hearts have led us so far astray from what life is really about that we are blinded.  We are blinded from living the life that our Savior redeemed us to live.  Maybe our “mud pies” are not really so satisfying after all?

There are over 3 million people in Tanzania alone who have never heard the gospel!  THREE million souls who have NEVER heard the name of Christ.  I don’t think our dear pastor and his wife are splashing around making mud pies over here.  I think God has BLESSED her family with faith, and joy, and HIS love as they live by faith and share HIS hope here in Tanzania.  They are blessed.