Blessed are you Lord God, King of the Universe who created everything seen and unseen.

If you’ve seen The Chosen, you’ve heard prayers that begin this blessing.  I haven’t researched it a lot, but it seems this is the traditional beginning of Jewish prayers. 

I think, particularly in Western culture, we need a lesson in Kingdom living.  I’ve been in lessons on how to live in God’s kingdom, but do we know what it is to be under the rule of a King. 

We’ve only read about kingdoms.  We don’t live in a culture where one person is ruler of all and there is no higher authority.  That you obey the king because it is treason to disobey the king.  Treason is punishable by death.  With that perspective, it makes sense that when we break the King of the Universe’s law (sin), the thing we earn (wages) is death.  There are people who don’t like or agree with some of God’s laws.  That’s cool.  But He is God.  While history tells of terrible kings, our King loves us.  Our Kings laws are for our benefit.  While our just penalty was death (for all have sinned and the wages of sin is death), He planned to die for those sins.  This week we “celebrate” that our God Jesus conquered the grave, paid the price for our redemption and sits at the right hand of God the Father on our behalf.  We who put our trust in this act of love, have God the Spirit living in us. Not just our trust/faith, but we surrender our lives to God and to His law.  The Spirit is our helper and comforter and teacher.

I had a thought in bible class Sunday.  While we were sinless state in the garden, we chose sin over God.  Now in our sinful state, God asks us to choose Him over sin daily (and imperfectly) and He has paid the price for when we fail, and we have His Spirit to help us grow more and more into the people He created us to be. 

Be blessed.