Genesis 17:15 - 16 (NRSV) 15God said to Abraham, “As for Sarai your wife, you shall not call her Sarai, but Sarah shall be her name. 16I will bless her, and moreover I will give you a son by her. I will bless her, and she shall give rise to nations; kings of peoples shall come from her.” This morning I did a Lectio Divina (a meditative reading) on the above passage. When you read in a meditative fashion, God will often make certain words or phrases jump out at you because there is a personal message that you need to hear.
Today the word that jumped out at me was
bless. I wondered if God might be seeking to bless me in some particular way -- if God knows that i need a blessing.
Of course, the particular blessing that God wanted to give to Sarah was a son -- and with the son a new identity as signified by the name change. I don't think God wants to give me that particular blessing (though the invitation to embrace a new identity in Christ is always something that God is working on for us).
But my thoughts particularly focussed on
why God wanted to bless Sarah -- it was so that she might "give rise to nations and kings." The blessing was not merely an end in itself but a way to spread God's blessing out into the wider world.
Why does God want to bless me? Not merely because I need it (though I do). God wants to bless me so that others (kings, princesses (Sarai means
princess), leaders etc.) may arise and do good in this world.
I had a brief vision of the congregation as a vast pool of potential. There are people within the congregation who have incredible skills and abilities, who are natural leaders and who have much to share. God may want to bless me but I suspect that it is because God wants to use me to inspire others, enable others, sometimes to get out of the way of others and let them lead or act or participate in such a way as to bring greater blessing on our community and beyond that to the world.
