The Miracle and Power of Blessing

By Maurice Berquist

We are very thankful for the generosity of Dr. Berquist's family in allowing us to share this life-changing book on the Two Listeners Christian Classics pages. We have loved this book for years, have given out many copies to friends and disciples searching for a closer walk with our Lord. We encourage you to take the simple message here and experiment with this concept to prove it's truth in your own walk. Our own experiments with Dr. Berquist's ideas have brought blessings and miracles into our lives and those around us. It is with great joy and anticipation that we share this book! Blessings to you and yours this day and always, the two listeners team

Preface

Blessings walked into my life wearing a large, almost over-powering flowered hat. I will never forget the day.

While I was a student in college, I was invited to speak to a large international convention. This address was not to be the main one of the evening - it was to be a short introductory talk preceding the main address by veteran missionary statesman E. Stanley Jones.

Many years have passed since that time when I stood trembling before the packed auditorium. I cannot remember one thing that I said, nor can I remember anything that E. Stanley Jones said. I only know that when the speaking was finished the people crowded around Dr. Jones like a swarm of bees. They wanted his autograph, wanted to shake hands with him or ask him a question.

I walked off the stage, feeling as insignificant as I ever have in my whole life. No one had come to talk to me or comment on my brief talk. No one? Almost no one. One little old lady wearing an outrageously flowered hat came to shake my hand. She smiled.

"Bless you, my son," she said. "You gave a wonderful talk. I pray that God will bless your life and make you a blessing to everyone as long as you live. You were a blessing to me today. Bless you, oh bless you."

Then the enormous hat with the little lady under it disappeared in the crowd. The memory of her smile stayed with me.

Later in the evening, I met with some of my college friends. They were curious to know how it felt to share the platform with a world-famous personality.

"It's a little like crawling out from under Plymouth Rock and finding someone standing on top of it." I explained. "But one thing happened that made me feel better - a little old lady in a flowered hat. She came up to me and said, 'Bless you, young man.' Then she heaped a few more blessings on me and walked away. I never did hear her name."

"That has to be 'Mother Perry,'" someone said. She goes around blessing all kinds of things. One of her favorite expressions is 'Bless the Lord.'"

In the months and years that followed, I learned to appreciate the attitude of this remarkable lady. Though many severe trials came to her, she managed to bless the Lord through all of them. She discovered a strange, almost mystical power over the things that usually defeat and frustrate people. Without explaining how she did it, she managed to put a key in my hands that unlocked many doors. She made me think about the strange power of blessing. She encouraged me to share it with other people.

Even after these years, I am not exactly sure why it works. I am fully persuaded that it works, and it works for everyone.

This book has been born out of a desire to share the Good News. Bless you as you read it.

Introduction

She was wonderful. Hr name was Sally Erickson and she was really wonderful. But I could not tell her. Her mind was closed against the whole idea. Her dull gray eyes shifted listlessly like hungry sparrows looking for food on a concrete pavement. There was no way I could look into those sad eyes and say, "You are really wonderful."

If beauty was hidden in that heavily lined face I could not see it. Nor could she. Had she looked in a mirror to find some trace of hope, some trace of beauty, her mocking image would have plunged her into deeper despair.

You have seen people like her. Sloping shoulders, shuffling feet, furtively darting eyes - all these make up the picture of someone who has the ability to live with joy but has lost the will to search for it.

Shortly after meeting her I learned that she had reason to be discouraged. Ravaged by sickness, plagued with family problems, her mind was leaving her.

Since the normal way of solving problems was not working for her, she was building a world of fantasy - a world in which she could feel comfortable. It was a world of insanity. The doctor had studied it and his verdict was simple - frightening but simple: "Next Thursday, ma'am, we will send you to Tuscaloosa. Maybe they can get that mind of yours straightened out." The doctor had sincerely tried to help, but he could not. His verdict was another act of despair.

How, then, could I think that this bundle of human misery was wonderful It is easy to see why I could not say "you are wonderful." To try would be mockery - mockery of the cruelest kind.

How did I meet her? Why do I think she is wonderful? An even more interesting question is to ask why she herself believes that life is wonderful - and that she as a part of it is wonderful. Something came into her thoughts, almost like some kind of reverse thief who left presents instead of taking them. This secretive intruder put a key in her hands that unlocked a whole new world, a world of real physical health and real mental health.

What kind of key? Where is that key? Can any one of us find a key like that that will let us walk into a room full of magic mirrors that will reflect new images of ourselves? Can it be true that these exciting images of the person we would like to become are not magic? They are fantasy. They are fact.

There is a key. It is called blessing. What a short word that is! A few years ago that word would have slipped in and out of my mind without causing so much as a faint stir. It was a good gray word, a low-voltage word. Like a well-worn overcoat, it was too good to throw away but no longer stylish or really useful. Now it is different. It is a short fuse to an explosive world. It has become the key to thousands of miracles that I now about.

The word blessing became the key to turn in the rusty lock of Sally's life. No one could have been more surprised that she when she saw that hidden within her as a world of health and healing, a world of wonder - a wonderful world.

As I write this, I must tell you that there is a wonderful world waiting for you. Bless you, you really are wonderful. Of course, you have always felt that there must be some sort of secret that some people discover and you have wondered why you haven't found it.

It's a little like a group of blindfolded men in Ali-Baba's cave. They run their fingers through piles of rubies and diamonds and imagine that they are pebbles. So they walk out empty handed, poor as when they entered.

"Can I bring my neighbor to your lecture tomorrow morning?" The soft southern drawl of the charming Alabama woman was so beguiling that I almost told her that it would be all right if she wanted to bring a saber-toothed tiger through the magnolia-lined streets of Huntsville. "Of course you may bring her. Why do you ask?"

"Well, she may disturb you. She is not your ordinary housewife looking for a place to drink her second cup of coffee. She has problems."

"Haven't we all," I answered.

"Not like hers," she replied. "Physically she is a wreck, a basket case. But worse than that, she is under treatment for a mental illness. Next week she is scheduled to be sent to Tuscaloosa."

"Tuscaloosa?" I asked.

She replied, "That is the state mental hospital."

"If she is that sick," I suggested, "she probably needs some of the things we are talking about. After all, the Church is not a display case for perfect people, but a hospital for sick ones."

"What if she disturbs the meeting?" asked the woman.

"Let's take that chance," I said.

During the lecture the next day I was not sure I had made the right response. The troubled woman was there. So were her troubles. Although I had not been introduced to her, it was not difficult to recognize her.

She found a seat. It did not seem to satisfy her. She found another. Through the hour she was up and down, in and out. It was as though she was being pursued by an enemy that none of us could see.

Frankly it irritated me. It didn't anger me; it just irritated me. But in a sense I welcome irritation. Irritation keeps you alert. It keeps you from settling down too long in one spot. For a speaker, it forces him or her to find new approaches, new insights. Who knows, if people get enough sand in their shell they may, like the oyster, make a pearl. Without the challenge of irritation it is possible to answer questions eloquently that no one is asking, to invent cures for disease that non one has.

At the close of the lecture I was introduced to the visitor.

"It's nice to meet you, Sally," I said.

"Sally," my soft-voiced friend said, "this is Doctor Berquist."

"Doctor Berquist, I am a sick woman, real sick," the woman responded.

"Would you like to have me pray for you," I suggested.

"Why not?" she said.

We walked together to a small room adjoining the auditorium. We walked slowly because I was trying to think of some way I could help. Silently I prayed for guidance. The medical and psychiatric doctors were not the only ones frustrated by her problem. I was frustrated too.

I asked Sally to be seated in the chair across from me. "Now I am going to pray for you," I said. "Then I want you to pray."

"I don't know how to pray," she replied.

"Don't worry about that," I said reassuringly. "I will pray first and then I will tell you how to pray."

With that introduction I bowed my head, closed my eyes, and began to repeat slowly the words of an ancient Hebrew psalm. I heard myself softly saying the words from that storehouse of songs forged from the flinty hills of trouble.

Bless the Lord, O my soul; and all that is within me, bless his holy name. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits; Who forgiveth all thine iniquities; Who healed all thy diseases; Who redeemeth thy life from destruction; Who crowneth thee with lovingkindness and tender mercies. Who satisfieth thy mouth with good things; So that thy youth is renewed like the eagle's.

A strange quietness filled the little room. I felt impressed to repeat the ancient poem that is recorded in the Old Testament of the Bible by the musician king, David, in Psalm 103:1-6.

I repeated these words more slowly. It was almost as thought they were being written on the walls of my mind by some mystic hand. The stillness in the room seemed even deeper and more intense.

"Now I want you to repeat these words with me," I said.

Phrase by phrase we spoke the words of this three-thousand-year-old song. Some of the words were spoken falteringly as Sally struggled to form them. But they were spoken. And we did it together.

I cannot forget the moment. Two people, literally strangers, said words together - words that linked them for a moment to infinity. Phrase by phrase Sally's hesitating voice joined mine. "Bless the Lord … bless his holy name … who forgiveth … who healeth all they diseases … who redeemeth … who crowneth … who satisfieth … who reneweth."

The words were spoken timidly, almost fearfully, but they were spoken.

During this time my eyes were closed. When I opened them, I looked on a changed face, a surprised face, an almost jubilant face. The ashen look of despair was gone. Sally was changed. The smile on her face was one of astonishment rather than gratitude.

"I feel different," she said joyfully. "Something happened to me."

"Tell me about it," I said.

"I can't tell you because I don't know what happened," she replied. "I simply felt something go through me like electricity and I feel well. I am not sick anymore."

"I believe the Lord has healed you," I told her.

"I can't understand it, but I feel like a different person," she said.

It was true. Something almost unbelievable had happened. The woman was healed. She was not hospitalized. She did not need to be. Both the desperate mental illness and the physical sickness were gone.

Of course, I was delighted. But I was almost as astonished as Sally. As soon as I said good-bye and God bless you I found a place where I could think about what had happened.

What did I do? What did God do? More important, why did God do what he did when I did what I did?

If I could answer these questions I might make one of the most important discoveries of my life. As a matter of fact, I could hardly call it a discovery. I wasn't looking for anything.

I had simply stumbled over a new idea.

Somewhere in the back of my mind is a quotation: "Occasionally he stumbled across a new truth, but he always picked himself up and hurried on as though nothing had happened." I didn't want to be like that.

Something had happened. But what? A heap of encrusted ideas about prayer were shattered. Isn't prayer asking for things? I hadn't asked. Isn't prayer an energetic recounting of our problems in the presence of the Almighty? I had not told God about the agonizing needs that paralyzed Sally's life. Much as I believe in it, I had not "anointed with oil" as the New Testament writer James commands (James 5:14-15). Yet healing had come.

To those who believe, no explanation is necessary. To those who do not believe, no explanation is possible. But I wanted an explanation. Is there some kind of magic in repeating the words of this particular ancient psalm? Had I stumbled across something new? I couldn't hurry on as though nothing had happened. It had happened. My mind bristled with questions - no answers, just questions.