Hidden Blessing

We live in a society based heavily on rewards. When we excel at work, we get a raise or promotion. When we excel in sports, a trophy adorns our house. When we excel in the spiritual life, things are different. God knows our achievement but rewards us secretly.

Brethren, “What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man conceived, what God has prepared for those who love him,” God has revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. For what person knows a man’s thoughts except the spirit of the man which is in him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is from God, that we might understand the gifts bestowed on us by God. And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, comparing spiritual things with spiritual truths to those who possess the Spirit. The unspiritual man does not receive the gifts of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. The spiritual man judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one. “For who has known the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?” But we have the mind of Christ. But I, brethren, could not address you as spiritual men, but as men of the flesh, as babes in Christ. I fed you with milk, not solid food; for you were not ready for it; and even yet you are not ready, for you are still of the flesh. For while there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not of the flesh, and behaving like ordinary men? For when one says, “I belong to Paul,” and another, “I belong to Apollos,” are you not merely men? What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you believed, as the Lord assigned to each. I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth. He who plants and he who waters are equal, and each shall receive his wages according to his labor.

1^st Corinthians 2:9-16;3:1-8

When God sees our love for Him and devotion to His Church, we are honored in ways the world cannot understand. Countless saints have been revealed as great only after their death. Sometimes centuries later, saints are revealed with incorrupt bodies. The world never knew.

For those who love the Lord, even the saints are known to them because they “possess the Spirit.” The world is blind to God’s blessings not because God hides His blessings, but because the world does not desire them. God rewards are spiritual, not physical.

The Church commemorates Saint Evdokimos today who lived a relatively quiet life. It was only after his death that God honored his faith with miracles. It was only after his life that people understood they had been in the presence of holiness. He received hidden blessings from God.

Christ says, “Rejoice and be exceedingly glad, for great is your reward in heaven.” (Matthew 5.12) Heaven should be where our attention should focus. With every choice we make, with every act of mercy we offer, heaven should be our goal instead of visible rewards.

The unspiritual man is “unable to understand” God’s wisdom and hidden blessings. If our focus is on the earth and physical rewards, even if our rewards are gathering in heaven, we will be filled with grief at the empty trophy shelf in our house. Our grief will blind us to God’s blessings.

Take time today and ask God to open your eyes to His blessings awaiting you in heaven. Be prepared to change your heart to see them. You won’t ever see God’s hidden blessing looking for physical rewards.

Lucky for us, we have a time of prayer and fasting which begins tomorrow. With the “Fifteen Days of August” dedicated to fasting and asking the Theotokos for her help, maybe this can be the year we change our vision. Maybe this is the year we see our hidden blessings from God.