The Lord bless you and make his face to shine upon you and give you his peace. This is a well known pronouncement among those of us who are seeking to portray God’s grace to those in our community. But we need to step back and ask a few pertinent questions.
What does the word “blessing” mean and how does God bless us? And what does He blesses us with?
How do we get these blessings, and how do we make use of them? And finally how can we be a blessing to others?
This concept of “blessing” in the Bible is Hebrew in origin and is derived from the OT Hebrew word (baw-rahk’), which means “to kneel”, and was used to convey the meaning of respect or adoration. You would kneel before a king in respect or to offer thanks for something or some favour received. It goes without saying that you would kneel before God in adoration, praise, thanksgiving, supplication for the things he has done in your life.
Translators tried to find a word that would convey the notion of God’s favour. There was no word in the Greek language that could achieve this. So the word “bless” was not a literal translation, but had religious overtones. Our English word Bless is derived from a German word (bletsian) which loosely means to smear with blood. The translators used it even though it had come from a heathen source.
So there was a long and varied series of associations: Jewish, heathen and Christian which when blended together gives us the English use of the word “bless”.
Therefore “blessing” is a word which has a position in Christian vocabulary by reason of long-standing usage. But it does not directly translate the Greek word (eulogeitos)!
The word benediction is derived from the Spanish bendito from which we derived the word benediction which literally means “to say good things or good words”.
The word “blessing” then recognizes the existence and deity of God. It tells us that we can be aware of His existence and have inner happiness because of who and what He is. It also tell us, that God was thinking about us in favourable terms and that He had a mental attitude of love, grace, and mercy toward us from before the beginning of time.
Praise, or blessing, for anyone comes from a mental attitude of love and appreciation for that person. God makes an initial move toward us because of His mental attitude of love. He provides us His graciousness, His gift of salvation, His spiritual gifts, all of which are manifestations of His love for us. He thought “good words” toward us before we were conceived.
He has provided all blessings for us as an expression of His love. Our response of blessing or praise toward God, and toward others, is a response from a mental attitude of appreciation. The favour that is achieved is passed from us unto the next generation. This was God’s intention, carried out by those who knew him and made available to all by the shedding of the blood of Jesus. Today if this blood is smeared over you, you are indeed blessed. Read Deuteronomy 28.
over time. God knows this and therefore his remit is to give us the tools to be able to deal with the constant changes we will face as time meanders on. God therefore blesses us by giving us his name and on receipt of this he places his spirit in us so that we can learn how to become fully human. In essence, the blessing of the lord is the ability to walk in step and in obedience with the eternal spirit and as our mind is aligned with the mind of God, our whole vista changes. We are able to view things objectively. This enables us to use our gifts and talents to get wealth, acquire things and use our material wealth to advance the kingdom of God on the earth. An example of this is Solomon. As a young inexperienced man instead of asking God for things, he asked him for wisdom, knowledge and understanding and because of this he became the wealthiest man in his generation. So when we say may the lord bless you, we are in essence saying may you accept, develop and walk in the mind of Christ so that you can fulfil the will of God for your life on the earth.
