Your Blessed Life Now
Scripture:
“1 Blessed is everyone who fears the Lord, who walks in his ways! 2 You shall eat the fruit of the labor of your hands; you shall be blessed, and it shall be well with you. 3 Your wife will be like a fruitful vine within your house; your children will be like olive shoots around your table.”
Psalm 128:1-3
Observation:
I love reading Biblical imagery, because it challenges one to really try to put themselves in the shoes of the author and the original audience as to fully appreciate the images being used. The author of this Psalm writes out of joyful enthusiasm about what the life of someone who walks in the ways of the Lord will look like. I love how the author talks about the wife of someone who fears the Lord, “[she] will be like a fruitful vine.” This is a powerful image of blessing and prosperity in a land that lives and dies, feasts and famines, rises and falls at the success of their agriculture.
I find it funny that the psalmist does not mention anything about the godly man’s mother-in-law. Shouldn’t there be some image of silence used for her.
Application:
I do my best to live a life that is in reverence of the Lord. I try hard to walk in his ways. I joyfully spend time meditating and trying to incarnate his word. And because of these things it is easy to read such passages and expect the life of one who walks in the way to be ripe with the fruit of blessing. But when we say such things we are implying that when the author talks about blessing that his definition and the current definition popular in many churches are the same. I would say that Jesus lived a blessed life and he died on a cross. I would say that Paul lived a blessed life and he was beaten, tortured, stoned, and eventually beheaded. Many of those who we read about in the pages of the bible lived blessed lives by their own admission, and yet by the current definition of blessed we would probably count them among the cursed.
It is very easy for me to see the things that are going wrong in my life and cry out to God asking him, “why are you not blessing me?” But one thing that over the past four years that God has been showing is that our definition of blessed is not his.
Prayer:
Lord, thank you for truly blessing me in my life. Help me to remember the blessings you have given me when things look bleak. Amen…
Comments
You are too funny. Anyway, I love your insight on this passage. Too often we do see all the negative things in our lives and question God on making things difficult for us. It's kind of funny if you think about it, because we know that a lot of the people we read about in the Bible lived challenged lives, and we know they were Blessed. However, when something remotely challenging hits our lives, we get a "How dare He? I'm doing what He told me and this is how I get repaid?" mentality. But God has blessed and continues to bless in ways we don't always see. Thank you for helping me to see that.