Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. (Ephesians 1:3) In attending to the story of God that we've been caught up in, it is important to pay attention to the action words.  That is, the verbs.  This tells us where things are happening and trains our attention for the places that God is at work. Eugene Peterson does this as he works through the letter of Ephesians in one of the last books he wrote, called Practice Resurrection: A Conversation on Growing Up in Christ.  It is, essentially, a commentary on the book of Ephesians.  Except that it is also more than that—it's a discipleship manual too, teaching how we grow up to maturity in Christ as members of Christ's church.  It's a book I very much appreciate, so forgive me if I reference Peterson more often across these devotionals.  Of course—if you're looking for book recommendations, this is a good one! But coming back to those action words Paul uses to train our attention on God, the first one we hear is the word "bless."  Three times it occurs in just this first verse.  We discover that God is both the blessed one and the blesser.  "Blessed be" or "praise to" God because he has "blessed" us with every spiritual "blessing" in Christ.  God is blessed, and he gives blessing. In other words, God gives to us out of who and what He is.  The blessed One blesses.  This is actually true of most everything that we have from God. God is love, and God loves us.  God is gracious and gives us grace.  God is compassionate and shows us compassion.  God is perfectly consistent with Who He Is.   The name with which God reveled himself to Moses is "Yahweh," which when literally translated means: "I am who I am."  It is out of God's being—his Great "I Am"—that every good gift flows.  God is blessed.  He is who he is.  And so in meeting God, the Blessed One, what do we meet?  We meet blessing—the one who blesses us with every spiritual blessing in Christ.  God gives us Himself.  This means of course, that wherever we have blessings that we can name, love that we have received, grace that we have given—what we have—is God.  What we receive, what we give, what we hold on to—all of it is something of God.  Which is to say: God is far more intimately involved in our lives than we may have expected! Peterson puts it another way too.  "What God does comes out of who God is." Such that "our experience of God is who God is."  There is no distinction between God's being and God's doing.  "There is no dividing God up into parts or attributes.  …We don't figure God out. We don't explain God.  We don't define God.  We worship God who is as he is."   So, take stock today.  What of God's actions, blessings, and gifts is rippling through your life today?  Take time to worship and praise him for it.

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