This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2017, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

Editor's note • Robert Kirby took a little time off last week. This is a reprint of an earlier column.

Following last week's column, a woman wrote to tell me that I wouldn't recognize the answer to a prayer if it weighed 800 pounds and fell on me out of heaven.

Actually, those were my words. She really said, "blessings only come to those worthy of them and you obviously don't understand it at all."

She's probably right. There's a whole lot of life I don't understand, including the tax code, modern art, quantum physics, tweeting, and the actual definition of a blessing.

Most people agree that a blessing is supposed to be something nice, something that doesn't make you miserable which by broad definition would be a curse.

In general, blessings are things that help us avoid unpleasantness. Where I go to church people get up all the time and count as blessings the fact that they have jobs, money, family, health, looks, religion, and all their arms and legs.

By inference it follows that people who do not have these things are not quite so blessed. Either that or their blessings are pro-rated. Two-income American families, for example, are generally considered more blessed than no-food-at-all Ethiopians.

Makes sense in a fatheaded sort of way. If things are going well, it's got to be a blessing. And everyone knows that blessings only happen to people who deserve them, right?

For example, if a business executive in Provo pays his tithing, says his prayers and goes to church, it stands to reason that his business will prosper and he will become wealthy.

Conversely, if a Colombian drug lord murders the competition, bribes the right judges, and works hard to get his product into American noses, his business will prosper…and he will become…um, wealthy.

OK, bad example. Blessings, assuming that this is what they are rather than just plain dumb luck or circumstance, are tricky. Counting them as such seems to depend on what you see as the purpose of life.

If life is just something to get through, then being rich, attractive and free from worry are serious blessings. If life is a learning experience, meaning that we're supposed to be improving ourselves during it, those things can actually be stumbling blocks.

I once heard a guy claim that having his legs blown off was a blessing. Apparently, he was a directionless and reckless hedonist when he had legs. Losing them slowed him down enough to reconsider the point of life.

Absent his mobility, he went back to school, got married and began a successful business. All because—he says—the Lord blessed him with a major explosion.

Makes sense to me. There've been times in my own life when I wished God had blessed me with some nice death instead of so much character building experience. But the truth is that I'm a better person for those times I felt cursed.

Like most people, personal improvement is something I don't consider until forced to by circumstance. Today I have a better perspective for having had these experiences, but it took years before I recognized them as possible blessings.

I still don't know exactly what a blessing is. I do know that I don't pray for them quite so earnestly anymore. I might get one.