Discovering blessings might take more effort for some — but the answer is easy

Are you “blessed?” If so (or if not), how do you calculate that question?

Like an old song suggests, do you try to count your blessings instead of sheep, as you fall asleep?

You say, “Yes, I may have worries, but I also love where I live, both my nation and my neighborhood. Plus, my family, friends, flowers and fall football all fill me with feelings of blessedness. So, count me in: I am blessed!”

For others, though, blessedness feels elusive.

Maybe you look at the world, and inside your soul, and find it difficult to count, let alone count on, faces and cases that constitute a condition called “blessed.”

After all, you conclude another crisis surely lurks, soon to rage geopolitically, or perhaps prowl micro-biologically, as even strains of strained relationships surround, and aging, ailing bodies underscore human finitude.

“So, there,” you demur, “Count me out: Not blessed!”

Whatever your current circumstance or sentiment, when considering the question of blessedness, another old song comes to mind. Written about 3,000 years ago, the first song in the Bible’s songbook, Psalm 1, begins with the words, “Blessed is the man who…”

This is how the Book of 150 songs opens, as if to invite, instruct, and introduce the singer to an inspired collection of covenantal prayers, praises, and promises. Leading the way, is this one who is blessed.

What is his way? What is his work? What is his worth?

For the wise, a walk through Psalm 1 strikes a blessed chord, indeed, as it follows a poetic progression depicting what God reveals as both right and righteous.

Along the way we see one who is different, who distances himself from the wayward, and delights himself in the Word (vss. 1-2). “He is like a tree planted by streams of water” (vs. 3). He is the opposite of the “wicked” (vss. 4-6). He is blessed.

But why, and how, is he blessed?

Notably, Psalms 1 offers no command to be, or to do, something. The song simply sets forward what is: straight talk about blessings and curses. And this reality of description (not prescription) may rightly cause the hearer to hit pause on the impulse to find a forced application to the matter at hand.

Relatedly, when hearing a sermon, do you ever find yourself making a bee-line for a “be-line” — you know, that part that commands you to “be” a certain way, or be like a certain person? If so, you may also expect the preacher to add specific ways to “become,” by use of special “how-to’s,” or “secrets.”

In the case of Psalm 1, this (sadly) might sound like a call to avoid all places where sinners sit, walk, and stand (vs 1), to add more prayer, penance, and reading to your devotional punch card (vs 2), and,or, to act like a tree (vs 3) not like chaff (vss 4-6). Yet, might this call for more effort sound like mere moralism?

Is the message of Psalm 1 ultimately about you and your actions?

Happily, the blessedness revealed here does not come by way of your works and worth. None of us could ever “be” this busy, or this blameless (as the apostle Paul confirms in Romans 3, even quoting from the Psalms). Rather, true covenant blessings must come from outside of self.

Only a savior can earn and offer, this blessedness.

In short, the “Blessed Man” of Psalm 1 is Jesus. In life and in death, he satisfied all righteousness. Which means that those whose trust is in him can say, and sing, for sure: “I am Blessed.”