Make Me a Blessing

Scripture and Biblical Echoes

The Beauty of the Hymn

The hymn’s simple prayer turns faith outward. Rather than treating blessing as something to accumulate, it asks that a life become useful to others. Its gentleness suits the ordinary acts through which service is most often expressed.

My Reflection

Make Me a Blessing takes me back to some of my earliest memories of going to church—and immediately to Sister Morris. She presided at the local AME church just a few doors from our home. We were not members, but in those days, especially as children, whenever you were invited to church, you went. Sister Morris visited our home and invited us, and when the church bell rang the neighbourhood children would set off for Sunday school.

It did not hurt that there was always a scrumptious breakfast. We did not go for the fish and loaves, of course, but the bread of life comes in different forms.

I remember surprisingly little of the rest of those services, but I remember the songs. Most of all I remember Make Me a Blessing. We children did not know the stanzas particularly well, but when the familiar part came, everybody could join in.

Sister Morris made the song credible. She represented practical Christianity: diligent leadership, kindness, care, a listening ear and help when help mattered. She was the first woman I remember seeing in church leadership. She became a distinguished leader within her denomination and continued serving well past one hundred years of age. She was blessed, and a blessing.

Later, hearing older members sing this hymn often sounded like an appeal to the young: make your life useful. Do not merely seek blessing; become one. That includes attention to immediate needs, but it also includes the disposition to care about another person’s spiritual welfare.

A visit, an invitation, a meal, a listening ear, a song—ordinary kindness can travel for decades. I know because one of those children still remembers.