the Providing Shepherd, and he promises to take care of his sheep. God will bring his justice to his people and to the world, and therefore he is the Judging Shepherd. The Lord also makes the promise that he is the Future Shepherd. Because he is the eternal God, he is in control of all time; past, present and future. If God kept his word in the past and blessed the ancient Israelites, then he will keep his word and promises today and throughout all time. Past events become our assurance of our future lives with God.
The Gospel of Mark tells us a story when people were bringing their children to Jesus in order that he might bless them. Jesus’ own disciples rebuked these parents and their children because they thought they were too busy to deal with these kids. Jesus responded by saying, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. I tell you the truth, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it (Mark 10:14–15).” Jesus then blessed the children.
Keeping in mind the words of Jesus, this author wanted to think of God’s blessings with a child-like mind. The cartoons in this book are attempts to illustrate how a Christian may respond to God’s blessings by trusting in God as a child. A child would put his faith in God by believing in him to be his Heavenly Father. A child would believe God would answer his prayers and bless him through his love.
It is the hope of this writer that he will help the reader to understand the blessings which the Lord has in store for those who will place their faith in him. As a person understands God’s blessings, he will find the great hope which God’s promises bring; and that each one will experience God’s blessings as a reality in their lives. The truth of the matter is that God is miraculously showering us with His blessings! Once we are completely showered, what do we do when we are all wet? We should share this message of God’s grace with others who do not know the truth about our Shepherd. We should share the of God’s blessings with others by trying to pass our blessings on to them.
The Nature of A Blessing
“O LORD Almighty, blessed is the man who trusts in you.”
Psalm 84:12
“O Lord, help me to understand. My mind is so small, but Your grace is so big.”
The Nature of A Blessing
“We deserve it!” This statement was a declaration made by a local radio announcer as a way of celebrating good news. The city in which he lived had been threatened by a severe weather. The weather forecast placed the city in the direct path of a hurricane. However, this particular hurricane narrowly missed the announcer’s hometown. Instead, the storm had moved on to devastate another part of the country. The day after the hurricane threat had passed; the announcer’s city was enjoying a beautiful day, with cool temperatures and clear, blue skies. The radio station’s weather meteorologist was predicting calm weather for the rest of the day, and this forecast led the announcer to proudly exclaim, “We deserve it!”
“Why?” was a question that immediately comes to mind. “Why did they deserve it?” Another way to put it would be to ask, “What had the radio announcer or his city done in order to deserve having a hurricane miss them, and then on the next day, what did they do to deserve having a beautiful day?” A second question also needs to be asked, “What did the other people in another part of the country do to deserve being ravaged by that same hurricane?” The reason this second question needs to be asked is because of what that particular hurricane had done to other people. Did the people of the second city think, “We deserve it? That is why we are living through the aftermath of having a hurricane destroy our homes, businesses and city today.”
This is the point that is being made; hurricanes do not hit or miss a particular place on the basis of what the people are doing. People do not deserve hurricane hits or misses. And likewise, God’s blessings are not given to us because we did anything to deserve them. If you deserve something, then it is because you have earned it, or because you are being paid for something you have done. Romans 6:23 is a great reminder of what we have done and what we deserve. The Apostle Paul wrote, “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” We deserve death and devastation due to our sin, but God offers us the gift, a blessing if you will, of eternal life.
Does anyone deserve good weather? Or, does anyone deserve bad weather? What can you possibly do to keep a hurricane from striking your community? You can prepare yourself for any inclement weather that may strike, but how do you keep it from striking?
People might answer, “We prayed and asked God that the hurricane might pass us. And, it did!” However, one would assume that the people who were struck by the hurricane were also praying that it would miss them. It seems unlikely they would ask God to strike themselves down with a hurricane that other places might be spared. Does this mean one group of people prayed better prayers than the other; and thus, deserve to be missed? Is this why they deserved it? The problem is that often people do not understand what a blessing actually is. A hurricane is an act of nature. An act of nature which God allowed to occur according to the laws of nature which he himself put in place when he created the world. But, a hurricane is an act of nature nonetheless. As an act of nature, a hurricane is a storm of life, and the blessing lies not in the fact that the storm misses or hits a person. The blessing is what God does to help us survive and overcome the storms that impact our lives.
If you receive a blessing because you worked for it and thus deserve it, then it is not a blessing at all but a payment or reward. A blessing is not a deserved payment. But too often, when good things happen to us, we view them as things we deserve, as if we have some claim over them because of things we have done. And not surprisingly, we look at the bad things that happen to us in life as curses. We believe that we most certainly do not deserve any of these curses in our lives no matter what evil things we might have committed.
In order to understand the showers of blessing found in the Thirty-fourth chapter of Ezekiel, we first need to appreciate what a blessing is. We need to understand the nature of the blessing.
A Description of a Blessing
It is important that we know what a blessing is in a general sense, and we need to know how God wants to bless us in specific ways. By having this knowledge, we would then understand why we would want to be blessed by God.
A good way to understand the nature of a blessing is to come to it with a child-like faith. One day during a Sunday school class, I was teaching the small children about the meaning of the blessings that come from God. I asked these children what a blessing was? They described a blessing as “something that God gives you.” They further defined the motive of God’s willingness to bless us as being the fact that God loves us. Both of these answers showed their child-like understanding of God the Father and his blessings; instead of childishly believing we deserve God’s blessings as so many adults like to think.
Over and over again throughout the Bible, God makes the promise to bless his people. The promise found in Ezekiel 34:26, is spoken by the Lord, “I will bless them (his people) and the places surrounding my hill. I will send down showers in season; there will be showers of blessing.” We need to understand what a blessing is in order to decide if we would even want one. A blessing could be described as a gift, whether spiritual or material, which God bestows upon his people.
In this passage from Ezekiel, the English words “bless” and “blessing” come from the Hebrew word “barak.” The root meaning of this Hebrew word is “to kneel”, and can be used as a greeting, a blessing or an exhortation of praise. The idea of “kneeling” for a blessing can give us a rich illustration as to what a blessing is. As a Christian kneels before God, he can ask for a blessing, or he can bless God through praise. In either case, that Christian is humbling himself before God by lowering himself through the act of kneeling.
When God blesses a person, it is not that he humbles himself before the person. Instead, God lowers himself from his throne of grace and the realms of heaven, and enters the