What Does It Mean to Be “Blessed”?

“I know that if we _______, then we’ll be blessed.”

“God will bless us as long as we _______.”

“I will…open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it” (Malachi 3:10).

That’s all great—but what is a “blessing” exactly? And with the vagueness of its description, how do these promises help us at all? Or do they? What are general “blessings” (not of the specifically catered Priesthood blessing kind) good for if we have no idea what they are?

One place to start is to consider what can count as a blessing. That includes…pretty much anything good God gives to us, right? It could be money or food; protection or strength; spiritual gifts or future promises. Blessings could be either tangible or intangible, large or small.

But maybe there’s another way to look at it. Some other definitions of “to bless” include to invoke “God’s favor upon a person”; to give “approval or good wishes”; “to consecrate or sanctify”; to “make or pronounce holy”; and “to bestow good of any kind upon” (Random House Unabridged Dictionary). What if blessings have less to do with specific gifts God bestows upon us, and more to do with having an assurance of God’s love, approval, and active interest in us? If this is the case, then the specific manifestation of a blessing doesn’t really matter; what matters is that when we are “blessed,” we can be confident that God is pleased with us and that His hand is actively involved in our daily struggles. This reassurance, if you think about it, is more valuable than any kind of physical “blessing.”

This would also help explain why Malachi promises “a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it” to those who faithfully pay their tithes and offerings. Honestly, I’ve never personally felt so blessed with good things and feelings that I wouldn’t be able to receive more if God offered it to me. Even when almost everything in my life seems to be going right, given the task I’m sure I could always come up with more items on my “grown-up Christmas list.” So what does it mean to have a blessing without “room enough to receive it”?

It certainly doesn’t make sense in terms of temporal “blessings.” But if we think of being “blessed” as being showered with God’s love and approval, maybe our “blessings” can overflow in the sense that God’s love and investment in his children exceeds anything we can comprehend with our mortal minds. If this is the case, then what exactly the “blessings” of tithing are makes little difference, so long as we understand how fully we are being supported by the only omnipotent being in the universe.

I used to be annoyed whenever I heard the word “bless” in any vaguely defined context. But now I understand that God’s blessings aren’t about complying with some kind of methodical reward system; they’re about knowing we are loved, and cared for, and doing well in His eyes. In that sense, I am very blessed indeed, and it is a blessing far beyond my ability to contain.