Six Spiritual Blessing We Have Been Given In Jesus
God is the source of all blessing.
God is the source of the blessing of creation,
the beauty and joy of nature and living creatures.
God is the source of physical and material blessings,
for food and shelter, for good health and friendship.
As the apostle James says, God is the source of all blessing,
‘Every good gift is from above, coming down from the father of lights”
As Abraham Heschel writes,
“Just to be is a blessing. Just to live is holy.”
As Joan Chittister says,
"Blessing is a way of acknowledging that the God who created us goes on lavishing life upon us all our days."
Each holy day we gather together to ask the Lord’s Blessing,
to express gratitude to God for the life we have been give.
We come before God in humility, grateful for all our blessing.
God has blessed us so let us bless the Lord.
As we offer blessing to God, we are blessed in return.
In offering blessing to God and others, we are infused with divine power.
In giving blessing to God, God’s creative, healing, creative power is released.
God is the source of all blessing, but not just material blessing, for God is also the source of all Spiritual Blessing, for what the apostle Paul, the mystic, called, ‘‘the spiritual blessings in the heavenly places. God’s spiritual blessing, the unseen world of spiritual realties,
A Christian story asserts that God has given humanity these spiritual blessing in and thru Jesus, that God’s spiritual blessings are revealed, present and active in Jesus. So Paul writes, ‘Blessed be God, the Father of Jesus, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly place.” God is the source of every material and spiritual blessing, and the spiritual blessings come to us thru Jesus.
Paul is writing Ephesians to many who were peasants and slaves, who were poor and powerless, perhaps a bit short on material blessing, they still had an equal share of spiritual blessings. So what are these spiritual blessings that have revealed and given us in Jesus?
The Top Six Spiritual Blessings
The First Spiritual Blessing revealed through the message, teaching of Jesus is, God has chosen all of us to be holy and blameless before him in love. We are all chosen and loved by God. No one is excluded. We can all stand before God holy, blameless, and in love. God loves all of us. The lily is beautiful, gold is precious, water is wonderful, but more beautiful, more precious, more wonderful is the blessing of God’s love. Having been blessed each one with divine love, we are chosen to bless others with our love.
The Second Spiritual blessing revealed to humankind thru the revelation of Jesus is that God is our Father/Mother and we are all children of God. There is a God WHO LOVES US, AND CALLS US all CHILREN OF GOD. God’s love, generatively, and care extends to all people and all things. The love we have for children, this kind of love God extends to us. This is the spiritual blessing of inclusion, belonging, being part of the family of God.
The Third Spiritual Blessing revealed and given to us thru the life, death and resurrection of Jesus is our redemption and the forgiveness of sins. This is the Spiritual Blessing of divine assistance for our emancipation and purification, where the ‘abysmal compassion of God cleanses us and our world from sin.
The fourth spiritual blessing that Jesus reveals to us is that the wisdom and the will of God is to gather up all things in heaven and on earth in Jesus. No one is beyond the reach of God’s redemption; no one is beyond being gathered up by divine love and mercy. This is the spiritual blessing of restoration and peace.
A fifth spiritual blessing that is ours by virtue of Jesus is an inheritance. This would be the blessing that Jesus called “eternal life,” given to all who have Jesus as their anchor of hope.
The Sixth Spiritual Blessing that is revealed and bestowed upon us through the work and grace of Jesus is the seal of the promised Holy Spirit. God became a human being so that the human being might become like God.
These are the six spiritual blessings given to us in Jesus: the love of God, to be children of God, the forgiveness of sins, the gathering up of all things in Jesus, the inheritance of eternal life, and the sweet guest of the Holy Spirit. These are our spiritual blessing in Jesus, so may we be grateful and live our lives to give glory to God. If we have been so blessed, so may we become a blessing to others.
These blessings make peace and release God’s creative, healing, transformative power. Whether in good times or in bad. We are blessed and offer blessing in times of plenty or in times of famine, in sickness or in health, in joy or in pain. Offering blessing is a discipline for life, a way of living in the present moment with gratitude for what is good.
The prophet Habakkuk writes, ‘Though the fig tree does not blossom and no fruit is on the vine, though the produce of the olive fails and the fields yield no food,…yet I will rejoice in the Lord; I will exult in the God of my salvation. God is my strength…” [3:17f]
The apostle Peter writes, “Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds,”
We bless the Lord at all times, we learn to offer blessing in all things. We learn to bless God and others from both sides,
‘The Lord giveth, bless the Lord”
The Lord taketh away, bless the Lord.
We have money in the bank, bless the Lord,
We don’t have money in the bank, bless the Lord.
When we are up and when we are down, bless the Lord.
When we are calm and when we are stressed, bless the Lord.
As long as I have life and breathe, as long as I live, I will bless the Lord.
This spirituality of blessing is often more abundant among those who less than it is among those who have more. Perhaps that is why when the electricity fails in Port a prince, you can hear people singing song in the night to God but when our electricity goes out, we don’t sing. We take our blessings for granted, we have earned them, we have so many material blessing, we don’t need to ponder God’s spiritual blessing.
We are blessed, not just with children, friends, homes, work, wealth, health, travel, cars, food, wine, farmers markets, flowers, water, soil, animals, gold, rivers, fish, birds, wind and rain and snow, sunrise and sunset, sun and moon and stars, we have been blessed with divine love, we are God’s children, we have God’s redemption and forgiveness, we have eternal life, and we have been given God’s Spirit. So let us bless others with the blessing we have received.
“The Blessing of the Old Woman, the Tulip, and the Dog” from The Book of Seventy, by Alicia Suskin Ostriker,
To be blessed
said the old woman
is to live and work
so hard
God’s love
washes right through you
like milk through a cow
To be blessed
said the dark red tulip
is to knock their eyes out
with the slug of lust
implied by
your up-ended skirt
To be blessed
said the dog
is to have a pinch
of God
inside you
and all the other
dogs can smell it