hashtag blessed

"In everything I showed you that by working hard in this manner you must help the weak and remember the words of the Lord Jesus, that He Himself said 'It is more blessed to give than to receive.'" Acts 20:35

I did some research before sitting down to write this, so here we go:

- There are currently 25,075,568 posts on instagram hastagged #blessed

- An astounding number of these are selfies.

- A bunch are food.

- Those that aren't selfies or food are usually pictures of a significant other.

The selfies are a little weird, but the food and the significant others make sense. We're certainly blessed by having enough food to meet our needs, and it's one of the greatest blessings ever to have found the person that gets you, to spend the rest of your life with.

But still, it seems like #blessed is far more about bringing attention to ourselves and our purported blessings than it is about bringing glory to He that has blessed us.

I'm going to go ahead and make the call that everyone who is a Christian and has an instagram account (or twitter, or Facebook) has used this hashtag before. I know I have. And I'm not necessarily saying that's a bad thing. I'm just saying that we should look at our motives before we post.

The term "humblebrag" is used alot when describing behavior on social media. It's going to happen when you're on a platform where you pretty much get to control the way that others see you almost completely. I'm afraid that #blessed is becoming more of a humblebrag than an actual desire to bring the honor to the giver of blessings.

"It is more blessed to give than to receive." God blesses us with gifts, then it's our job to bless others with the gifts given. In that context, hashtagging a picture of the new shoes you got with #blessed doesn't really makes sense - cool, new shoes! Are they going to be used to help others? Probably not. Unless you got hiking boots to hike into the hill country and spread the gospel, in which case, that is totally blessed and good on you.

I don't want to sound harsh. Like I said, it all comes down to the motive. If your motive is to bring gory to God, to thank Him for the second chances and amazing opportunities that He has brought you and show that you are aware there isn't a way you could have done it yourself, that's awesome, and that is blessed. If it's to somehow absolve a selfie, to brag about your relationship or possessions... maybe use a different word?

I guess the bottom line is that blessed is a heavy word. We were blessed by the coming of Jesus to absolve our transgressions, to make it possible for us to spend eternity with our Creator. We were blessed by being brought out of slavery and into the light. We are blessed by having hope regardless of what the world throws at us, because we know it is not our home. In light of that, of what blessed really means, using it as an arbitrary hashtag for things we want to show off isn't necessarily wrong, but it certainly is cheapening.

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