On Being Blessed

I was reading a psalm last night.
It's Psalm 128:
Blessed are those who fear the Lord.
who walk in his ways.
You will eat the fruit of your labor;
blessings and prosperity will be yours.
Your wife will be like a fruitful vine
within your hosue;
your sons will be like olive shoots
around your table.
Thus is the man blessed who fears the Lord.
May the Lord bledd you from Zion
all the days of your life;
may you see the prosperity of Jerusalem,
and may you live to see your children's children.
Peace be upon Israel. [NIV]

Think about the imagry that this psalm uses to describe a blessed person:
"Your wife wil lbe like a fruitful vine...your sons will be like olive shoots..."
no, im not referring to the agricultural imagry.
The blessed people in this psalm have prosperity. It even says so, "the prosperity of Jerusalem."
The blessed people live to be grandparents.

Job.
Everyone knows Job, even people who don't know anything about the Bible.
Job is the guy who got everything taken away, but since he had a good attitude and remained faithful to the lord, got everything back twofold.
And then he wrote it all down in prose.

Job 42:12+13 state:
"The Lord blessed the latter part of Job's life more than the first. He had fourteen thousand sheep, six thousand camels, a thousand yoke of oxen (2k oxes) and a thousand donkeys. And he also had seven sons and thee daughters."

That's a lot of animals for one man.
He was blessed with tons and tons of stuff.

There's another Bible character that everyone knows about: King Solomon, the wisest king that ever lived.
Heres one of the things that he had to say about stuff:
"I denied myself nothing my eyes desired;
I refused my heart no pleasure.
My heart took delight in all my work, and this was the reward for all my labor.
Yet when I surveyed all that my hands had done and what I had toiled to achieve,
everything was meaningless, a chasing after the wind;
nothing was gained under the sun."
[Ecclesiastes 2:10+11]

In the Old Testament times, people were blessed who had lots of stuff.
In modern society, people are also considered "blessed" or "lucky" if they have sweet stuff.
People who make a lot of money and have a cool house and a cool car and not annoying kids are the envy of everyone.
But Jesus said something rather counter-culture.
He said, "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.
Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God.
Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you."
[matthew 5:3-12]

The people in old-thymey jerusalem say riches and equated it with blessing.
But Jesus said the opposite.
He said that the people who are meek, who are mourning, who are poor in spirit, and who are persecuted and who have things said about them that are false- these people are blessed.
Normally, when you come across someone being beat up, you don't say, "hey man, you're blessed!".
No, you say, "that's not cool" and then if you're smart, you help the guy out.
Jesus and the disciples in the early church made a clear distinction in terms of blessing.
Everyone in the early church was poor- people gave up all of their money.
In fact, there's an account of a couple who died because they lied and DIDN"T give everything they could to the church.
These people weren't "blessed" as olden-time israelites might have thought it.
They had nothing on the earth.

Solomon also said, "The sleep of a laborer is sweet, whether he eats little or much, but the abundance of a rich man permits him no sleep."[5:12]

There's no reason to accumulate wealth on the earth; we're all going to die anyway, and theres no point after that.
Rather, we're supposed to put all our energy into the Great Commission- because that's what matters after we die.

I guess what im trying to say is that Jesus gave us a new outlook on "riches" and "blessing".
Before, they were based on material items, wealth, how many children you had, and how old you lived.
But now, its based on something more important and less tangible.

On Good Attitude

Often times its difficult for us to keep good attitudes when we're frustrated or in a tough situation.
Every now and then i get this feeling (it happened a lot in the last quarter of this past school year) that the whole world is conspiring against me. I feel like the walls are caving in and there's no escape. Like when i have 4 hours of homework, was late to school every day that week, and have about 80 assorted things to remember concerning people/places/tech crew/etc.

Other times, we can find ourselves in situations involving people.
Like this one time with David in 2 Samuel 16:5-13.
"As King David approached Bahurim, a man from the same clan as Saul's family came out from there. His name was Shimei son of Gera, and he cursed as he came out. He pelted David and all the king's officials with stones, though all the troops and the special guard were on David's right and left. As he cursed, Shimei said, "Get out, you man of blood, you scoundrel! The Lord has repaid you for all the blood you shed in the household of Saul, in whose place you have reigned. The Lord has handed the kingdom over to your son Absalom. You have come to ruin because you are a man of blood!"
Then Abishai son of Zeruiah said to the king, "Why should this dead dog curse my lord the king? Let me go over and cut off his head."
But the king said, "Wheat do you and I have in common, you sons of Zeruiah? If he is cursing because the Lord said to him, 'Curse David,' who can ask, 'Why do you do this?'"
David then said to Abishai and all his officials, "My son, who is of my own flesh, is trying to take my life. How much more, then, this Benjamite! Leave him alone; let him curse, for the Lord has told him to. It may be that the Lord will see my distress and repay me with good for the cursing I am receiving today."
So David and his men continued along the road while Shimei was going along the hillside opposite him, cursing as he went and throwing stones at him and showering him with dirt. The king and all the people with him arrived at their destination exhausted. And there he refreshed himself."


David was passing through a town and all of a sudden some crazy dude started throwing dirt at him.
Instead of having his head cut off, David showed an incredible amount of rationality.
First of all, its not like the guy was any real threat to the King. He had his bodyguards and such, probably a whole army behind him, and this one guy wasn't about to harm the king.
David also exhibited some perspective:
at the time, he was facing off against his own son for his thrown. His son wanted to kill him; why blame the random dude for wanting to kill him also?
So David takes the passive approach: he ignores the guy.
He trudges on.
He gets to where he intended to go, perhaps with a little more excitement than otherwise.

I know plenty of people who, were they in this situation, would have blown up in the guy's face and gone nuts.
Who was he to question the king?
Surely killing off this nuisance could have been justified.
But David probably just chuckled a little bit and kept on walking.
That's pretty sweet.

On going off to War

On going off to War I saw Narnia 2 last weekend with a bunch of people... it was pretty good, better than the first.
My brother said that they changed a lot of things from the books, but i haven't read them all so i couldn't tell.
One thing that did stick with me, though, was the scene when Peter challenges the bad leader guy to a fight to the death to buy time from the imminent attack.
the idea of a "fight to the death" hinged on tradition that the humans had that Peter was able to take advantage of.

Czech it out:
2 Samuel 11:1, NIV
"In the sping, at the time when kings go off to war, David sent Joab out with the king's men and the whole Israelite army. They destroyed the Ammonites and besieged Rabbah. But David remained in Jerusalem."

The people in Narnia had wartime traditions.
Now adays, we have "rules" for war; we have certain ways that we deal with POWs, we have certain courtesies that we follow.
And in Bible times, there was a specific time of year that they went to war with each other.
Like, that totally blows my mind.
In the spring, its the time when the flowers bloom and the bugs start biting you.
In the winter, snow falls.
And at some point, there was a time when you went off to kill the countries next to you.

like, think about that.
In order to get a tradition of "going off to war" at a certain time, you've got to fight for years and years.
The human race has been fighting for so long, that it's a tradition.
Just like Easter.
Every year at Easter time, we celebrate Easter.
Every year at wartime, we celebrate killing each other.

People tend to have a hard time getting along with each other.
Back in olden thymes, they fought over land and money.
Now adays, we fight over leaders and potential threats.

But on a level closer to home, we fight with our friends and family over stupid things.
Generally drama starts over a simple disagreement.
Instead of just getting over the fact that two people don't agree on something or someone (cough) they decide to go at each other's throats.

we should stop it.
we should stop having a tradition of fighting with each other.
and we should just all get along.....