The blessing.

What is a blessing? Is it the miraculous act of seeing the handprint of God manifested right in front of your eyes? Is it the answered prayer from the depths of the secret place of your heart? Is it the sunrise shining through your blinds or the sound of a coffee machine starting to pour your favorite blend? I’ve learned to recognize that it’s all those things and something so beautiful my words do not do Him justice.

When you describe someone as a blessing, it turns heads. People’s eyes get wide and wonder what is going to follow. At least that’s where my ears sharpen to. To hear that someone is a blessing to everyone they meet, I think AH! I want to meet them! Those words echoed to the parts of my brain that needed to be lit. It was water nourishing a hope that’s in desperate need of hydration.

To be described as a blessing. Is there a better way to be described?! and TO EVERYONE THEY MEET. What joy. It’s the extraordinary magic Ben Rector sings about it. The ability to recognize the light of God in the people around you. To speak of blessings is the visible, audible, auditory presence and exuding of our God. 

Sometimes we come across people who make us think, they would be considered the opposite of a blessing. But those occurrences aren’t by accident either. Like paths crossing at exactly the right time, we know the author of this world, Yahweh, orchestrated it.

There’s a beautiful Arabic saying from the book The Alchemist. Maktub. To preface, Paolo Coelho the author, may have used his wisdom and cultural investigation to find out that Maktub has a deeper definition than the Arabic google translate, to write.

In the book Coelho describes that Maktub, is the beautiful handwriting of our God. That all that happens for and to us has been written and predestined at the dawn of time. Yahweh Elohim, the hebrew name for God the creator is behind the pen. It’s His covenant name. It shows that by God desiring to love us, that means that He desires relationship with us. Which is what creation is all about.

God formed the world in 6 whole days and He specifically took the time to craft us from the dirt. Adam, the first human was made in the image of God. He took a big inhale and with all His love and affection breathed life into Adam’s flesh. Forming the first covenant with humanity. Life.

He loves us so much. He saw it would be good for Adam to have a partner. That man was not created to be alone. God desires unity with His creation and also for His creation to have unity with one another. So he put Adam to sleep, and from Adam’s side Yahweh took a rib and formed Eve. God lived in perfect union with His creation.

It didn’t take us very long to mess up this relationship. God gave us access to everything! The only thing He warned Adam and Eve of, was one tree. He told them that they would die if they ate the fruit from it. When the serpent came and told Eve, “did God really say that.” Manipulating her, he pushed her to question what truths God had actually spoken. Eve contemplated what she knew God had told her. She then saw the tree as good, and ate. She gave some to Adam and before you know it, they were hiding in a bush. Naked and afraid, season 1.

God knows all, and so nothing surprises Him. So Him calling out, “where are you?” to Adam and Eve is not because He didn’t know where they were. He was calling them out of their shame and guilt. He talks them through what had happened. He tells all of them the consequences of what eating from that tree had done. BUT! God gives them hope. In the first telling of the Messiah, Jesus, God speaks, from the seed of Eve, redemption will come. The seed will crush the head of the serpent and the serpent will only nip at His heel.

Now take your mind from remembering this story in Genesis and jump to any of the beautiful gospels. Go to your favorite. Mine is John’s account of the life of Jesus. I don’t know if it’s right to have a favorite, but I do. It’s in John’s account of Jesus carrying the cross up calvary that we find this redemption. We find Jesus pierced by a spear. Taking upon the sins of every man and woman. After He had died, the soldiers came and without breaking His legs, stabbed Him in His side and, “Blood and water gushed out.” (John 19:34)

The significance of this astounding. During pregnancy and at the time of birth, water and blood mix and after many hours of labor, your new blessed baby cries in your hands. As Jesus is stabbed, blood and water come from His side, to show us that new life has been formed.

That just as Eve came from the side of Adam, so did the fall of humanity, AND HERE WE FIND the redemption and new life that God promised in Genesis.

The promise God made in the garden, could only be fulfilled by God Himself. God could only fix what we broke.

Which is why during Jesus’s ministries He performed many miracles. But the words He tells the pharisees and a paralytic with some great friends always brings tears to my eyes.

After the man is lowered down through the roof, Jesus heals the man’s sins first, before telling him to take up his mat and walk. Back in the garden, the devil told a half truth. That although Adam and Eve didn’t die a physical death, they died a spiritual one. So when Jesus tells a man being lowered through the beloved aspotle John’s father’s house that his sins are forgiven, Jesus is showing what really needs to be healed from the fall in the garden. Our spiritual relationship with God.

That from the moment Adam and Eve are sent from the garden, we see man try and make themselves right with God. And I’ll let you know, it never works. We can’t bless ourselves. We could never make the God sized hole in us right. Because it aches for that which can only fulfill it. Jesus the Christ.

So after watching man fail, God decides to reveal His covenant with Noah, then Abraham and everyone else in those genealogies at the start of Matthew and Mark’s gospels. That all of the lives in the Old Testament paved the way for the true Way of Jesus Christ. The arrival of the promise from the garden was born in a manger in Bethlehem.

I think God loved Adam and Eve past the point of what we know human love to be. Which makes sense because to describe God’s love, is to describe a love of supernatural power and no limits. God knew it was too painful for Adam and Eve to see Him face to face after having gone against His words. That’s why He exited them from the garden.

That if they hid after disobeying once, what would happen to His beloved if they ate again and lived forever in this fallen state, “Then the Lord God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever—” 23 therefore the Lord God sent him out from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken. 24 He drove out the man, and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life. (Genesis 3:22–24)

The tone at which we read the Bible is crucial. When we ask God to reveal His tone and nature, how we read His Word soaks the areas of our being that only He can nourish.

What we see in the fruits of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control (Galatians 5:22–23) So if these are the fruits of God working in us, they must be examples of God Himself. Which means they must comprise His character. Which then that must mean, that’s how Jesus walked around Isreal. How He talked to the woman at the well with kindness and gentleness. That His heart is described as gentle and lowly in Matthew 11 when He is begging us to come to Him.

That the strongest of these gifts from the Holy Spirit, you’ve encountered in a human, does not touch the weakest of how Jesus lived these out.

What joy! The savior of the entire world is more incredible than we imagine.

What a blessing.

That the greatest blessing we could ever receive is Jesus Christ Himself. That our God from the dawn of creation, wove everyone’s story together and He included everyone in the redemption. All are invited. Everyone’s welcome. Following Jesus is the most inclusive exclusive club. Not by us doing anything, but by the sacrifice and love of what He has done on the cross. If you wanted to say we do anything, it’s that we invite Jesus in.

I’d agree, but even that we can’t take credit for! Since God is always knocking on His children’s hearts, He is the one initiating. HOW INCREDIBLE!

The beauty of maktub is that God takes our stupidity and hard headedness into account. He’s been so patient with me, and I know He will be with you. He’s so patient and kind, and His yoke is light. I think it’s us that create prisons and falsities in our minds of God and who we think Him to be and just like the garden, the serpent does whatever he can to distort our view of the perfect and loving God.

That’s why God tells us to seek His kingdom first. After God gets done telling us to not be anxious He tell us this, “But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.” ( Mattew 6:33) It’s why I have this tattooed on me. To always remember to seek God in all circumstances. To seek His presence over His blessings. And you may think, well I just want the blessing.

When we seek the presence of God, truly seeking Him with our hearts and mind, the blessings come but the true reward is God Himself. His presence within us.

Yahweh has no equal, His power, kindness and love will triumph over all the schemes of evil and He will always triumph.

Invite Him in.

If you’re questioning who or what Jesus is, reach out to your local church.

A friend that knows Jesus.

Most importantly, ask God Himself.

Cry out in the secret place of your heart and mind for Him. Be angry or question Him. I’ve found God meets us exactly where we are at. When we draw near to God He draws near to us. When we are real with God, He can meet us in what we are really going through.

Just as God revealed Himself to Thomas, the one follower of His twelve who doubted His resurrection, I pray and believe that the Lord will reveal His glory and beauty to you.