Blessings and Curses

Imagine someone tosses you a leather pouch, which is fastened at the top with a braided leather cord.  You can tell by the weight of the parcel, and the sound it makes as it lands in your grasp that it is filled with some sort of coinage.  Your heart begins to pick up its pace as you speculate the contents and purpose of the satchel.  As you quickly unfasten the pouch and shove your hand into the opening, your benefactor informs you the contents are blessings and curses for your journey, and you will need them for your journey through this life.  This expanded information immediately prevents you from extracting your hand from the bag with the coins you have just grasped.  Letting go of the coins, you slowly pull your hand out of the bag, and quickly close it again.  Turning to give the purse back to which it came, you realize you are alone, and a path lies before you to travel.

Standing and pondering, hunger soon makes itself known to you, so you begin to walk.  Up ahead, a town appears out of the mist, and the smell of food encourages the growling of your stomach.  Standing now in front of the merchant, you realize money is required, but all you have is your newly acquired purse containing both blessings and curses.  Reluctantly, you look in, but only darkness makes itself known.  Slowly, you reach in and pull out a beautiful gold coin, which the merchant happily exchanges for your meal.  The warmth of your full stomach is comforting, but the night air begins to chill your body.  You notice another merchant selling cloaks.  Once again you are faced with the task of plunging your hand into the unknown…another coin, and another blessing.  Your next stop is for a place to lay your head for the night, and once again you pull out another gold coin!  Was the mysterious gift giver wrong?

You awake the next morning, refreshed and ready to continue your journey.  Now without hesitation you pull coins out of the satchel to buy wears for you journey.  Gold, gold, gold, blessing, blessing, blessing.  Happily, you head out of town.

Rounding the bend, you notice the road narrows a bit; boulders tower to the left and to the right.  Taking no concern, you gaily continue on towards your final destination.  Before you can react, two shadowy figures overtake you and begin to beat you!  Stealing your provisions, your cloak, and walking stick they leave you barren and unconscious.

You begin to awake, your face pressed against the stones of the road.  Something wet is running down across your eyes, and you begin to blink to clear the fog.  Attempting to cry out, you soon realize your jaw is broken, and you cannot seem to get your legs to pick you up.  Screaming in unrecognizable tones, you cry “Why?”  Just then, as you are scratching in the dirt, your hand finds one of the coins.  It must have fallen out of the pouch in the confusion, but is it a blessing coin or a curse coin?  Slowly you pull the coin, which is grasped firmly in your hand, toward your face.  Hesitantly you look at the coin…GOLD!  Praise God it is a blessing coin!  As you look at the coin, you notice writing on the coin…it says “curse.”  What?  But what about all the blessings you received from the other gold coins?  Turning the coin over you notice more writing…it says “blessing”!

Once again a flurry of activity is around you!  More strangers!  “God help me,” you slur.  But these are not your attackers back for more, they seem to be attempting to help you.  You go unconscious once again.

When you awake, you find yourself bandaged and clean, lying in a beautiful bed.  You do not recognize the people around you, but you know you are safe.  A man appears over your bed.  Smiling, he explains he has been waiting for you.  There is something about his voice, which is strangely familiar…Weeks, go by, and your wounds heal completely.   One morning, while you are getting dressed you remember the voice, you know the man!  Immediately you rush out of the room looking for him.  Finding him, you acknowledge the fact that HE was the one who had given you the blessings and curses at the beginning of your journey!  “Why did you lie to me?  Why did you fool me?  For what purpose?”

Gently, the man looks into your eyes and says, “I said the bag contained blessings and curses, I never said that they were separate things.  When the coins filled your stomach and warmed  your body, you perceived them as blessings.  When you happily bought your supplies with them, once again you saw them as curses.  Some might say that the purchasing of those items ended up being a curse to you.  For if you had nothing, perhaps those evil men would not have molested you.  Others could say the coins and the items, which made you a target, brought you to your destination much more rapidly than you could have on your own.  Blessings and curses, they are yours for your journey, and you need them both.”

The preceding story is the product of prayer and reflection on a book that I was asked to read.  The Book I read was Life of the Beloved by Henri Nouwen.  If you read the book, you will find nothing resembling the above-mentioned story.  I found myself inspired by mainly one section of the book, “Broken”.  This was the first work of Henri Nouwen that I have read.  I would have to say that the verdict is still out on him.  I like much of what he has to say, but some concepts cause me to pause.  This story, as stated, does not represent the entirety of the work, but merely one of the sections that resonated with me.  I realize this might be the strangest post to date.