Blessings and Curses

I tend to think of a curse as being causally linked with wickedness. Bad things happen because I was being bad. God saw my evil and had I not been evil, then the bad thing that happened after I was evil would not have happened at all, but because I was evil, God sent evil things my way. Like, if the children of Israel were not wicked, then the fiery flying serpents would not have been sent. But I’m not sure it’s as simple as that. God doesn’t have a bag of blessings and a bag of curses and he just waits to see what we’ll do and then shake out the appropriate bag accordingly. God causes the rain to fall on the wicked and the righteous, and the sun rises on each of his children, regardless of their righteousness or wickedness. God sends good and bad things to all of us. We are blessed when we are righteous not because we are sent the good in life and shielded from the bad. And we are cursed when we are bad not because we are sent the bad in life while the good things are withheld. We are blessed because no matter our circumstances, we rely upon the Lord and draw strength from Him and we are more easily able to recognize the good in all situations, and more readily able to learn from the bad. We are cursed because no matter our circumstances, we have denied ourselves of God’s power and must rely on our own strength, and in such a state are often incapable of recognizing the good in even the best of situations, and usually refuse to learn anything from the bad situations. God didn’t send fiery serpents only to the wicked. The children of Israel weren’t composed solely of wicked and faithless people, otherwise none of them would have looked upon the brazen serpent and lived. God sent the serpents to the wicked and the righteous, the faithful and the doubters. It was a curse to the wicked because they refused to turn toward God and look upon their salvation. It was a blessing to the righteous because even though it seems like God had ceased to love them and was punishing them for something they didn’t deserve, God had in fact prepared a way to save them.