{"id":5084,"date":"2014-03-01T00:05:19","date_gmt":"2014-03-01T08:05:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/?p=5084"},"modified":"2014-02-28T14:55:42","modified_gmt":"2014-02-28T22:55:42","slug":"face-shine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/2014\/03\/01\/face-shine\/","title":{"rendered":"Face Shine"},"content":{"rendered":"

And the LORD spoke to Moses, saying: \u201cSpeak to Aaron and his sons, saying, \u2018This is the way you shall bless the children of Israel. Say to them: <\/p>\n

\t\u201cThe LORD bless you and keep you;
\n \t The LORD make His face shine upon you,
\n \tAnd be gracious to you;
\n \tThe LORD lift up His countenance upon you,
\n \tAnd give you peace.\u201d \u2019 <\/p>\n

\u201cSo they shall put My name on the children of Israel, and I will bless them.\u201d (Numbers 6:22-27)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u201cI\u2019m just blessed all over.\u201d The elderly man in our congregation always responded in the same way whenever anyone asked him how he was doing: whether times were good for him or not so good. How could he do that? Because he knew he was with God and would be with God forever. \u201cBless\u201d has become a religious word, all too easily spiritualized into an abstract unreality. It\u2019s not as complicated as we\u2019d like to make it. The word translated \u201cto bless\u201d means simply \u201cto make happy.\u201d God told Moses that the priests should tell the people regularly that God was watching over them with the intent of making them happy. A blessing is simply the opposite of a curse: the opposite of misery and unhappiness.<\/p>\n

God\u2019s will for people is that they should be happy. When God made the world, he saw that it was good, not evil. God did not set out to make us miserable. The problem of unhappiness comes as a result of how easily we can lose perspective. The old man, who in whatever circumstances, could recognize that he was \u201cblessed all over\u201d knew the simple truth that allowed him to weather the storms of life: he knew that he belonged to God, that God was with him, and that God would remain with him forever. He didn\u2019t let his circumstances hide God.<\/p>\n

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And the LORD spoke to Moses, saying: \u201cSpeak to Aaron and his sons, saying, \u2018This is the way you shall bless the children of Israel. Say to them: \u201cThe LORD bless you and keep you; The LORD make His face … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_s2mail":"yes"},"categories":[18,17,16],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5084"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5084"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5084\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5086,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5084\/revisions\/5086"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5084"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5084"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5084"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}