A Study of Blessing

A young man was sitting in a whicker chair alongside of a lake on a particularly sunny, summer afternoon.  He breathed in the air in satisfaction.  The coolness of the breeze that swept across the water was steady and satisfying, making this would-be hot day feel pleasant comfortable.  The lake glistened with pristine hues of shimmer across the lake's surface.  He sat in his chair, trying his best to take in the profound splendor of the day.  After a while, the young man becomes too overwhelmed with a sense of fulness, much like a glass that is overflowing might feel and he tilts his head back, lifts out his hands, and cries out, "Thank You, Lord, for this beautiful day!  Lord, You have blessed me with so much and all I can say is: thank You!"

In this hustle-bustle world, moments of sincere praise can be rare to come by, or seem too manufactured to trust.  However, to be sure, God has blessed us; we are blessed.  Truly, humanity is blessed beyond reason with a love and joy that is eternal and ever-full.  Unfortunately, being blessed is something we associate with material or with circumstance, as in: "God bless you," or "God blessed me with you," or "that was such a blessing."  And, although each of these statements is reasonable and farfrom insignificant, they do miss the mark in regards to blessing.

Blessing, in its truest sense, is dependent upon the One who blesses, He being God and God alone.  It is from God that all blessings flow.  That being said, the reception of blessing has, sadly, become mistaken.  Often times, we consider blessing to be a temporal felicity or a serendipitous occurence.  Howevever, each one of these fails to hit the nail on the head of true blessing.

Psalm 1:1-3 lays out true blessing.  In it, the writer indicates that delighting in the Law of the Lord, meditating on His precepts is true blessing. In a trues sense, knowing the Lord is blessing.  It is our relationship with God, restored through the broken body adn shed blood of Christ, that is blessing in its ultimate form.  In reference to temporal blessings, it would then be more accurate to say that they are the external effects of blessing, which is relationship with the Holy Lord.  In a sense, true blessing is the person of Christ in which all other temporal "blessings" are but a shadow of, as in, He is the raincloud and the others are but the droplets.

If we, then, take seriously this orthodoxy, our response to the temporal blessings should always be to praise the Blessing, which is Christ who has reconciled us to God. Eph 1:3-14 has Paul praising the Lord for giving every spiritual blessing under heaven, defined in terms of election, predestination, and faith.  All of these are the blessings of right relationship with the Lord, the ultimate blessing. 

Similarly, James 1:17 has James defining, in no abmiguous terms, that "Every good and perfect gift is from above," which is a clear indication that blessings are sourced from and in God.  This should, then, cause sincere praise of the Lord for every blessing for it is He Himself who is blessing in its perfect form.  Let us then take time to praise the Lord who blesses for all of His blessings that He lavishly bestows!