Manry Family

Blessing is one of the biblical words for which I’ve always struggled to find a modern equivalent.  The best I’ve come is to say that I’ve been blessed, a hindsight observation I’ll usually make when I realize how fortunate I am.  But blessing as a verb, as an action that I am called to engage in and exchange with the people I encounter, I've been unable to find an adequate picture.  Until this past week.  On the verge of our departure to Uganda, friends and family filled our hearts in a way I can only describe as blessing.

Wednesday night at our home church in Rochester, a send-off service was planned for us.  When Lori and I walked into the church building, we discovered a scene on the stage filled with familiar pieces of décor we had earlier sold or given away, giving us one last taste of the life we were leaving behind.  But what will never leave us is the evening we experienced with several people that had shared this journey into mission work with us in various ways.  They affirmed us over and over with words made meaningful by the lives we’ve shared with them.  The refrain of their encouragement was this: “You are our family. We confirm your calling into this mission work, and we commission you to use your gifts to minister to the people of Uganda.”  Eleven times we heard those words spoken; countless times we’ve already heard them replayed in our own hearts and minds. 

In the days remaining the blessings continued from friends and family who couldn’t stop laughing, singing, crying, and praying with us, simultaneously grieving our soon absence in each others lives while encouraging us and sending us forward into a work we all knew that God has been drawing my family to.  We had been given a blessing.

A blessing is a gift, but not a gift as we might commonly think of one.  Jacques Derrida, the contemporary French philosopher, has reflected on the impossibility of a true gift, suggesting that ulterior or selfish motives of the giver or feelings of debt by the receiver frustrate the gift transaction.  But a blessing is a gift given with the awareness that what we offer already belongs to God, allowing the giver to bless out of abundance and with abandon and the receiver to be fed and enriched without fear.  It is the result of a love that does not seek to possess the other but to share in the fullness and grace of God.

We thank our friends for filling us with more blessings than we were able to absorb, even now as I write in London en route to our new home in Uganda.  But we are also grateful to them for showing us who and what we must be to the people who God is placing us among.  We pray we can follow their example.

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