Thursday, July 10, 2014

The Trancending Trinitarian Beauty of the Aaronic Blessing


"The Lord bless you and keep you ..."

Indeed, the Father Creator, through His beloved Word, keeps and sustains us in body, heart and mind.  In His wisdom and loving mercy, He bids the material sun to gift both the powerful wicked and the meek good alike; He sends His rains, without distinction as to station or disposition.   All things will acknowledge this; some with trembling joy, some with great trembling fear, on a set day to come.

All praise to the LORD, the Father!

"The Lord make His face shine upon you, and be gracious unto you..."

Indeed, the dear Lord Jesus is the Risen God-man and the Face of the Father.  The Father can only be known by and through His chosen and revealed Face.  We humans were once fashioned in God's image; but the true Image of God is Christ Himself.  Thank God that His Face has broken into our sin-stained history to redeem us.  He has been gracious unto us through a most astounding means ... an executioner's cross, which sadly enough is perceived as foolishness and a stumbling block to many of Adam's children.  But this astounding means is the power of God unto salvation, as our Lord will eternally remind us by the sacred wounds which are stamped on His flesh (as St. Thomas the Apostle well knows, by the way).   We are reconciled to God with those wounds; and so the Lord's Face shines on us.  That is a Hebraic code, one which promises that the Lord Jesus smiles on us with Divine pleasure, as we go about our earthly ventures in this life.  What a joyous thought that is!  We who are reborn in God's Name and living water can live with vibrant confidence afforded by God's love,  resembling of a mom beaming at her little one's trusting grasp, or at her baby's contentedly nourished lips.

All praise to the LORD, the Son!

"The Lord lift up His countenance upon you ..."

Indeed, the Lord Holy Ghost lifts up and steadily points to the Face of God, God's countenance.   Now, we cannot by our own paltry reason or strength, come to our Savior's Face to honor Him.  No.  We would run away; or rather, truth be told, we rascals would all be naturally inclined to come all too close and give the suffering and smitten Man of Sorrows a few more floggings, along with those of Herod's thuggish captains and Pilate's mobbish legionaries ... if given opportunity.  But see here, the Holy Ghost's wishes will not be thwarted, ever, in His relentless and divinely reckless pursuit of God's elect.  For He calls us by the Gospel means, enlightens and opens our blind eyes through such, and then -- lo and behold -- He elevates and SANCTIFIES us unworthies.  This Comforter and Counselor is a lifter of unsurpassed ability.

All praise to the LORD, the Paraclete!

"... and give you Peace."

Indeed, the Peace which transcends all human understanding; that is to say, the Tri-unity's Peace.  A saving Peace,  a Peace once upon a time suspended from a tree.  Not a peace afforded by the world's mammon (which will eventually only tarnish or be stolen; or be devalued, or be lost under the sofa), or by the world's truces (all very temporary, in the grand scheme of things ... which is why we humans are prophetically given to labeling our big wars with numerals, items which only increase as history marches on), and by the world's quick pleasures (many of which are invariably escorted by gloomy Death in some form or another; be it STD's, or motorcar crashes, or by an unhealthy body-mass index).    True Peace carries no threat of Death or base disfigurement, to others.   Instead, True Peace carried a thing of certain death, a cross, and purposively turned such dismal thing into a something of divine beauty and triumph.  True Peace died on a cross to crush Satan's head and kill Satan's minions  of sin and Death; so that we might live together with True Peace, for an eternity ... to verily see and adore His Face, as we banquet in gusto with Him.

All praise to the  LORD, the Trinity!

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