The Ancient Art of Blessing

Posted by LeeAnn on September 1st, 2009 at 09:10am

I must admit I am a little addicted to cursing. Ask anyone who has ridden with me while I drive a horse trailer. Really there is a very good reason; all those other drivers are morons. Really- I have good reason – they see a truck and horse trailer coming at 6o miles an hour and at the last minute pull out in front of you to do 20 miles an hour and the horses get the privilege of scrambling to keep their footing. In my anger (always a form of helplessness) I blurt out what ever curse that comes to mind. Thirty plus years of driving various sizes of horse trailers has given me plenty of practice at cursing!

And it is has given me plenty of opportunity to want to experience a better way. For a while I put a pink cloud around all the other drivers I was going to meet on my journey. I figured it couldn’t hurt and it might just help. I began to notice that I didn’t seem to meet as many of those other drivers. Then I tried reminding myself that God drives all the cars, even mine. That also netted some fabulous results.

As of late I have returned to the ancient art of blessing. The dictionary says that to bless is to ask divine favor for some situation or condition. Simply put, blessing means to bring forth good in a situation, condition or personality. To bless an event as good even when the appearance of good is absent is to turn over the event to God.

Ok, as an addicted curser I can tell you it is really hard to see the blessing in folks that seemed to have gotten their drivers license from a Cracker Jack’s box!! And of course I believe I should be the one to determine if they should keep their driving privileges!

In all seriousness, I wonder if you will join me in an experiment. What if for the next month we all dropped our judgments, condemnations or opinions and blessed all we see. What we encouraged our friends to practice the Ancient Art of Blessing and see what happens. One of Jesus’ main messages was to “judge not by appearance but to judge by right judgment.” As a community, state and nation we seem to be spending millions of dollars and plenty of negative emotion and energy making each other wrong.

This past weekend I watched my niece in her 16 year old wisdom. Sometimes kids are better at living Truth than adults. At the local county fair several of the horse mom’s decided to exclude her from the championship part of the competition because of their two weeks of gossip and self-righteousness. They made a decision amongst themselves that was not grounded in fact or in the rules. They waited to ambush her with the decision two hours before the class without due process or consulting her adult leader of the situation. They tampered with the judge saying that she hadn’t followed “the rules.” So she fully competed and the judge was told not to consider her for the championship ribbons.

In truth there was no rule that she had violated. Even though the adults were told that prior to the event, they still tampered with the judge because they needed to show a 16 year old who was boss.

At the end of the fair, her leader confronted the 4-H extension agent with the facts again. What became evident was even the agent was in collusion with the mob mentality. When all the facts were presented it became obvious that inappropriate adult behavior had ruled. My niece has been victim of rumor, innuendo and petty politics. Here is the best part – she blessed them. She rode for the sheer joy of partnership with her horse. She judged her ride GOOD. She hugged her horse and enjoyed the time with her friends. She is however leaving 4-H. She said she doesn’t want to play with adults that don’t play fair. I don’t blame her.

In her blessing of the event it will be interesting to see want unfolds from this experience. I trust the power of Good.

I am tired of what is going on both at the state and federal level. In my mind we are becoming a divided nation and in our division may come our fall. Each day we all can contribute to Good. We can speak blessings and ask that only Good come from the situations we see. What we focus on expands. Why not focus on what we want rather than what we don’t want? Blessing places our focus on Good.

Will you join me in a little experiment? For one month will you practice the ancient art of blessing and see what happens.

Try this….

I bless you and bless you for the goodness of God that is within you

I begin now to bless everything that comes into my life as GOOD, GOOD, GOOD!

Bless your body, bless your health, bless your job, bless your boss, bless your co-workers, bless you mother-in-law, and bless what ever conditions that are present in your life right now.

What have you got to lose other than lowering your blood pressure?

Until next time,

LeeAnn Gibb - The Divine Cowgirl