Day 76..."A Beautiful Prayer...God is to be Respected...Good to Great"

The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you; the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace." This blessing is actually Aaron's.

Ok, who could have quessed where this beautiful prayer came from? The Book of Numbers is right. In the midst of complicated requirements for remaining clean and holy emerges this beautiful prayer! The Psalmist says..."fear the Lord." In my understanding this is equal to RESPECT. We fear the Lord, when we are disobedient. If we seek Him and His Will there is no need to fear. In the New Testament, we will read..."There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love"(I John 4:18). This is an ongoing theme in our faith journey...do we we need to fear God or grow fearless in love? Jesus says the greatest will be a servant and honor children. If we bring harm to children, we would be better off with a millstone around our neck. In a shock teaching, Jesus says it would be better to lose part of our bodies in this world than to lose our entire souls. This extreme teaching (for effect) is also present in the Sermon on the Mount.