HERE’S A QUESTION for you. Right now, if you try to imagine what would make your life a “blessed” one, what comes to mind? Be honest; no one but God knows what you’re thinking, and you couldn’t hide it from him if you tried. What would “blessing” look like to you?

Perhaps your vision of blessing includes some version of ease or success: being physically healthy, financially secure, respected in your profession, at peace in all your relationships. If you’re currently going through some difficult trial, blessing may involve God taking that trial away, or at the very least, giving you the strength to endure it. But I would guess that for most of us, there would still be an underlying and default assumption that such trials should be the exception rather than the rule, that a blessed life is mostly trouble-free.

But that doesn’t seem to be what the Bible means by blessing.

Elizabeth, remember, called Mary “blessed” twice. It doesn’t always show in English translations, but Luke uses two different Greek words. The first time, Elizabeth says, “Blessed are you among women” (1:42), using the Greek verb eulogeo, which means to speak well of or praise someone. The second time, Elizabeth switches from the second person “you” to the third person “she”: “Blessed is she who has believed that the Lord would fulfill his promises to her” (vs. 45). Here, the word “blessed” is the Greek word makarios, an adjective sometimes translated as “happy.”

I don’t care for that translation, because it carries too much cultural baggage. To us, “happy” tends to mean being filled with positive emotions; but biblically, a person can be blessed even in what we would consider unhappy circumstances. Why? Because to be blessed is to have the favor of God, whatever you might be feeling. That’s why, the second time, Elizabeth changes from “you” to “she”: women may speak well of Mary personally, but anyone who has God’s favor and believes as Mary does is blessed.

To put it differently, Mary isn’t blessed because she got what she wanted; it’s not how she imagined her story would turn out. Rather, she’s blessed because she got what God wanted and has faithfully accepted her place in God’s story.

In the gospels, the word makarios carries forward the Old Testament tradition of wisdom sayings or proverbs that describe the people who have God’s favor. The most famous example of this is Jesus’ so-called Beatitudes that open the Sermon on the Mount. Some of the Beatitudes make intuitive sense; when Jesus says that those who are merciful, or pure in heart, or peacemakers are blessed (Matt 5:7-9), who would argue? But Jesus first says that the “poor in spirit,” the mourning, the meek, and those who “hunger and thirst for righteousness” are blessed (vss. 3-6).

This is not blessing as the world knows it, and Luke’s version of the Beatitudes makes the point even sharper. In Luke 6, Jesus turns to his disciples and says:

Blessed are you who are poor,
    for yours is the kingdom of God.
Blessed are you who hunger now,
    for you will be satisfied.
Blessed are you who weep now,
    for you will laugh.
Blessed are you when people hate you,
    when they exclude you and insult you
    and reject your name as evil,
        because of the Son of Man. (vss. 20-22)

Needless to say, none of this represents what we might call “the good life.” These people aren’t blessed because life is going well; they’re blessed because they nevertheless have God’s favor and things will not always be as they are now. Jesus points forward to the day in which they will receive their heavenly reward alongside the prophets: “Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, because great is your reward in heaven. For that is how their ancestors treated the prophets” (vs. 23), that is, with hatred, rejection, and exclusion.

Having said this, Jesus turns around and castigates those who think they have it made:

But woe to you who are rich,
    for you have already received your comfort.
Woe to you who are well fed now,
    for you will go hungry.
Woe to you who laugh now,
    for you will mourn and weep.
Woe to you when everyone speaks well of you,
    for that is how their ancestors treated the false prophets. (vss. 24-26)

All of this is upside-down and backwards from the world’s priorities. Think about it. Imagine that your fairy godmother suddenly appears and puts two lists of words in front of you. List A has the words rich, well-fed, laughing, and respected. List B has the words poor, hungry, weeping, and hated. She holds out her magic wand and says that she will grant you one wish: from now until the day you die, you can be the person described on list A or list B.

Which would you choose?

Me? Honestly, I’m going with A.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that there’s anything intrinsically wrong with being rich or well-fed, just as there’s nothing intrinsically right about being poor or hungry. But we have to take care not to confuse what the Bible counts as blessing with what we think we would need to be happy. Mary’s Magnificat already challenges our worldly values and ideas of blessing and success by glorifying the God who casts down rulers but lifts up the humble and oppressed, who sends away the rich but fills the hungry with good things (Luke 1:52-53).

It’s a theme that will show up again in Luke’s gospel. And it’s one that should give us plenty of reason to pause prayerfully and think: if things aren’t going well, in what way should we still consider ourselves to be blessed?