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.