HAVE A BLESSED DAY

I sat in the hospital waiting room with just one other person, a fellow waiting for a doctor to return with a prescription. Someone walking by said hello to the man, and he replied, “Have a blessed day.” A short time later, I said to him, “Now that’s a great phrase, ‘Have a blessed day,’ because it says you are trusting God to do the blessing.” The man turned to me and beamed, “That’s right!” he said and went on to describe the power of his experience of Christ, explaining, “Blessed means ‘He will make you rise!’” After the doctor brought his prescription, this gracious man stepped into a nearby elevator, turned around, and said to me, “Have a blessed day.” I waved and said, “He will make you rise!” and the man was gone. I thought, “Wow! What a marvelous way to think about being blessed. If God is going to make you rise, then God is going to bring life and love and power and presence into your life and into your church. That’s blessedness!”

-- E. Stanley Ott, in the Foreword to “Becoming a Blessed Church” by N. Graham Standish


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