“The person who trusts in the Lord, whose confidence indeed is the Lord is blessed. He will be like a tree planted by the water, it sends its roots out toward a stream, it doesn’t fear when heat comes, and its foliage remains green. It will not worry in a year of drought or cease producing fruit.” Jeremiah 17:7-8 CSB
It is really interesting what “blessed” means in its original form: to bless, kneel, salute or greet. It derives from the noun knee and suggests the “bending of the knee in blessing”. When I looked it up in Webster’s Dictionary of 1828, which defines words based on America’s early Biblically based values, it reflected how I thought blessed would be defined:
Happy; prosperous in worldly affairs; enjoying spiritual happiness and the favor of God; enjoying heavenly felicity. (Felicity means: prosperity; blessing; enjoyment of good…I had to look that up too.)
Bending of the knee implies submission. We are submitting ourselves to the Lord, we are trusting in Him fully, which leads to a blessed life. But a blessed life does not mean a bank account with so many zeros you can’t count them. It does not mean living in a mansion on your own private island or owning a private jet for transportation. It means having full confidence in the Lord, no matter what your external circumstances. If we look only at our current situation, and judge it based only on what we know, we could be completely wrong.
Who knows what Good or Bad is? We can’t tell until the story ends. Here’s an example of a farmer and His horse:
One day, the farmer’s horse runs away. That’s bad.
The next day it comes back with 12 more horses. That’s good.
The next day the farmer’s son falls off the horse while training it and breaks his leg. That’s bad.
The next day the army comes through recruiting able bodied young men, but his son can’t go because he has a broken leg. That’s good.
And on and on the story can go.
Who knows what is good or bad? Who knows if it is a blessing or a curse? It’s not until we get to the end of the story that we can fully know the answer. But what we do know is if we submit to God. If we trust in Him completely, if that is where our confidence lies, no matter what, we will have a blessed life.
