Skip to main content

The Blessing

                 Blessed are those who keep his statutes and seek him with all their heart— they do no wrong but follow his ways. (Psalm 119:2-3) 

Have you ever tried to go somewhere north of you by refusing to travel north? Or to bake something by putting it in the refrigerator? How about opening a window you haven’t unlocked?  I’ve seen people insist on going up a down escalator. Here are two you probably have tried: pulling a door that says “push” or pushing a door that says “pull to open” and turning on an electrical device that isn’t plugged in. And then there’s the one I saw happened – messing with wires without turning off the circuit at the box. That’s a mistake I doubt he repeated (yes, he survived.)

We’re back to the idea of keeping The Law, and the silliness of insisting that something work the way we want it when that’s not the way it’s designed to work. And we all do it, whether it’s whining about the fact that there are too many calories or carbs in that piece of cake, declaring that we have a right to take the life of another person because we don’t want to have a baby.

But while we fuss and cuss because someone set a rule that doesn’t let us do what we want, we ignore the other part of the proverb. The one who obeys is blessed. This blessing doesn’t have to take a specific form or follow a specific formula, but let’s return to the doors that we push when we should pull or pull when we should push. Pushing the push door or pulling the pull door doesn’t mean you’ll be handed ten million dollars as you step over the threshold. It doesn’t mean a standing ovation. But it does mean that we get to enter or leave the place in question and go about our business. If you turn off the circuit before handling wires, you get the blessing of not being shocked.

This is one of those things we miss so often. If we seek Him with all our hearts, we will find Him, and that is the blessing we are promised to receive. If God adds nothing else, we are blessed, still. That doesn’t mean He won’t, but if we are obeying to get the blessing, we aren’t seeking Him.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The List

              Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ,   through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we boast in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance;   perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us. (Romans 5:1-5)           Think about it. We have been justified. At least, we could be justified if we stopped insisting that our justification be based on our merits. We have peace with God, or could have peace if we stopped throwing temper tantrums. We have gained access into grace i...
Post a Comment
Read more

Meditations of the Heart

  May these words of my mouth and this meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer. (Psalm19:14)           As I started writing this post, I noted that the meditations of my heart are all over the mental landscape, from a hub where eight superhighways come together to a lunar or nuclear landscape. Do you see my error? The moment I read the word meditation , I think about thoughts. But what’s described here is the meditations of our hearts ; our wills.           While the meditations of our minds may be all over the place, the meditations of our wills tend to be a little more stable by the time we are adults. We no longer tend to want to pursue the ten separate careers we did in any given day as children. Part of this is humble acceptance of reality. We come to understand that we can’t do it all. I think another part of it is disappointmen...
Post a Comment
Read more

Listen To Him

              The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your fellow Israelites. You must listen to him . (Deuteronomy 18:15)           Today, we switch from Jesus’ claims of “I am” to prophecies made about Him. My Bible platform is starting in Deuteronomy. I’d start in Genesis, where we would learn that the one who would save us would be a descendant of Eve (Genesis 3:15), of Noah (by default), Abram and Sara(Genesis 12:1-3). Isaac (Genesis 17:19), Jacob (Genesis 25:23), Judah (Genesis 29:8), and David (II Samuel 7:12-16). There were also references to a new covenant (Jer. 31:31-34; Ezek. 36:22-32). In addition, there were prophecies about when and where the prophet/Messiah would be born and what would happen to him.           Of course, naysayers will claim that Jesus’ life was retrofitted or reverse enginee...
Post a Comment
Read more