I Bless You No Troubles

Usually I’m the one who takes Kenny to school in the mornings (he is temporarily enrolled in public school to work on some of his language issues). Each morning as he hops out of the car, I say something like, “I love you. Have a great day!” or, “I’m proud of you!”

The other day when Kenny got out, before I could say anything, he said, “I’ll make you proud today.”

“Aww, I know you will, Son,” I said.

Recently, however, Kenny has begun saying something different. Each day as he opens the door, gets out, and wrestles his backpack onto his shoulders, he says, “I bless you no troubles!”

After he’d said it a few times, we asked him where he got the idea of saying it. “Nowhere,” Kenny said, smiling. “I just thought it would be a nice thing to say, because I don’t want you to have any troubles after you go home.”

Indeed it is. It’s a beautiful thing for a barely-eight-year-old boy to come up with, all on his own, a blessing he can offer his parents each day. It’s beautiful that he even thought of doing something like this for us at this age.

You know what? I hadn’t thought of offering him a blessing. Sure, I always said something nice to leave him with that warm feeling in his heart right before he went into his school. But blessing him? Hadn’t thought about it.

Good thing God thinks about blessing me, His child, a lot more than I think about blessing my own children.

I’m not saying I don’t do kind, loving things for my children. I do plenty of those, and I’m sure you do too. But thinking of what I do and say in terms of blessing them? More than that, thinking specifically of speaking blessings into their lives? Haven’t really thought about it.

There are two things I want us both to make it a point to think about this week. The first is to speak words of blessing to our children on a regular basis. Before they go to bed would be a great time to bless them. So would before they go to school, when they return home, or when something significant happens in their day. Spontaneous blessings would be meaningful too.

How exactly do we bless our children? There aren’t any certain words we have to say. Blessings don’t have to sound a certain way. They can be something as simple as saying, “May you be blessed with a good friend to play with at recess,” or, “You know what? Today God wants me to bless you by buying you an ice cream cone. Let’s go!”

The second thing for us to think about is this: Let’s see how many of God’s blessings to us we can recognize. I’m not just talking about realizing that our house or apartment comes from Him, or that the clothes we wear come from Him (though they certainly do). I’m talking about realizing it’s a beautiful day outside and thanking God for blessing you with beautiful weather. Or having a conversation with a friend and thanking God for blessing you with a few adult minutes taken out of your chaotic, child-oriented day.

Not only that, but check out all the blessings found in your Bible from God to you, or from human beings to their families. Blessings are powerful things! God has given so many of them to us in His Word, and He continues to give us more each and every day. In fact, He says that He has given us every spiritual blessing—not just “a couple” of spiritual blessings, but every spiritual blessing.

In fact, God has had specific blessings in mind for us since before the foundation of the world. Let’s look for those blessings this week and see how many of them we can recognize. But let’s not forget to bless our children this week too—frequently, lovingly, and purposefully. Let’s do our best to bless their hearts the way God blesses ours.

Ephesians 1:3—Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.