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The Blessing Of The Lord


               The blessing of the Lord brings wealth, without painful toil for it. (Proverbs 10:22)
                So Jacob served seven years to get Rachel, but they seemed like only a few days to him because of his love for her. (Genesis 29:20)
                The greatest blessing God gives, the greatest wealth God gives is Himself. We cannot do enough to earn God’s forgiveness, so forgiveness is a blessing that brings the wealth of eternal life without painful toil on our part.  It seems to be the everything else that we count as wealth that results in the painful toil. C.S. Lewis said that we are too easily pleased. We’re willing to make castles in mud puddles instead of going for a holiday at the shore. We substitute sex for love and intimacy. 
                But the other thing that comes to mind as I read today’s proverb is how painful toil seems to disappear when that toil is for something we really want. It’s painful to learn to become a writer. I have wept. I’ve felt like someone was tearing my heart from my chest, but as I look back, I see the time as a time of blessing, not of painful toil. That seems to have been Jacob’s attitude in the Genesis quote above. 
                This is not to say that I don’t think God has blessed the living daylights out of me this past summer. Granted, some of that blessing required some toil, but it was nothing in comparison with the blessing received.

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