In one of Jesus’s most famous moments, he describes a collection of blessings we call the Beatitudes. They are quite jarring because none of them sound particularly like good things that God has done for us. In fact, the person who experiences poverty or mourns for a loved one probably doesn’t feel blessed. But this is based on a faulty belief that blessing is related to an innate goodness or that we are being rewarded (or punished) somehow. That God likes us, so we get more stuff. Or else God hates us, and we’re miserable.

In this sense, we tie our own fortune — and almost more importantly, the fortune of others — to a game of constant comparison on a treadmill that never ends, that never grows weary. Blessing, often seen as a reward, is always something to be achieved, but with circumstances that are eternally shifting and poorly defined.

What Jesus describes in Beatitudes is not a blessing based on our relationship to God, but to one another. People in poverty because their neighbors profit from their life can be assured of wealth and wholeness in God. And likewise, those who profit here and live in relative luxury will be offered more struggle in God’s reign.

Perhaps the struggle many of us have with this is because we adapt to more, so we never feel wealthy. I wonder if this means we don’t really know blessing, either.