Yes! There is Good News! 11.12.16

There are some times in these articles that I write about God blessing us and how that is “good news.” There are other times when I write about how we should bless God. Just last week I ended asking the question, “Will you be a blessing to your heavenly Father?”

Can we bless our Heavenly Father? Will He be blessed by us? And if we can, will that blessing of ours turn out to be something we might call “good news?”

In Psalm 103 we read, “Bless the Lord O my soul, all that is in me bless His holy name.” This is how Psalm begins and it ends with the words, “Bless the Lord, O you, His holy angels ... Bless the Lord all His hosts ... Bless the Lord all His works ... Bless the Lord O my soul.” So, in answer to my first question, we can bless God!

The word “bless” comes from the Hebrew word “barak,” which literally means to “bend the knee, to kneel, and by implication to bless God.” It is the very same word that is used back in Genesis 1:27 - 28, “So God created man in His own image ... male and female He created them ... and God blessed them ...”

When God started to work with Abram (later called Abraham) in Genesis 12: 2-3, He said, “I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you ... and all peoples on Earth will be blessed through you.” God is the originator of life and so He is the originator of blessings. But as we saw, these blessings may be reciprocal in that when we are blessed by God, we are to kneel before Him and bless Him with reverence and awe.

Have you ever been blessed by God, the creator and sustainer of life? The question is really ludicrous. The answer is an emphatic yes! The fact that you have life is the first blessing. The fact that your life is sustained by oxygen, by water, by food in abundance is a blessing that some of us may take for granted. But where should we stop in enumerating the many blessings we receive from our Heavenly Father? We have five senses that connect us with the world around us. We have a super computer the size of a small melon within our skulls that processes all the information our senses feed it. But perhaps most of all, we have “the breath of life” from our God within us which enables us to reason. Yes, of all the creatures on the Earth, we are the only ones who can come to truly know the God who created all things. And in His love for us, He even allows us to try and reason Him away. He does not crush the non-believer. God feeds all His creation. He “so loves the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.: Bless the Lord O my soul.” Amen.

Until next time ...