Blessing

In my daily Bible reading, I read 2 Peter 1:2, “Grace and peace be yours in abundance, through the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord.” That got me thinking. (My wife hates that.) Had I written a devotional about benedictions? I did a quick search. No, I hadn’t. Yeah!

I love benedictions because they bestow a blessing. We find them throughout the Bible, and we see them in liturgical worship as well as other aspects of church services.

I did a quick search for a list of benedictions in the Bible, and there are a lot of them. So, I went to Bible.org because they had a list of eleven benedictions in the Bible. I can deal with eleven.

As I read each one, I immediately noticed a characteristic that I never noticed. From the list, ten of the eleven benedictions include the word “peace” and six of the eleven include the word “grace.” So, from my sample, peace is by far the most used blessing.

Peace and Grace are Important

It was time to use Strong’s Concordance. Biblehub.com has an abundant number of tools to help people study the Bible, and Strong’s Concordance is one of them.

One of the great things about Strong’s is that it includes lexicons for Greek and Hebrew. So I went to Bible Hub, entered 2 Peter 1:2, and hit Enter. Bible Hub showed me that verse in a long list of Bible translations. That list is always convenient. 

Next, I clicked on the menu item for Strong’s. Now I saw a lexicon of each word in 2 Peter 1:2. As for the word “peace,” Strong’s showed me:

peace
εἰρήνη (eirēnē) Noun – Nominative Feminine Singular
Strong’s Greek 1515: Probably from a primary verb eiro; peace; by implication, prosperity.

That is interesting, but I wanted to dig deeper. So I clicked on the link Strong’s Greek 1515 which took me to a page full of indexes and way more information than I was prepared to tackle. 

What does peace mean?

However, scanning down the Greek Lexicon, for “peace” I found the following: “the tranquil state of a soul assured of its salvation through Christ, and so fearing nothing from God and content with its earthly lot, of whatsoever sort that is“: Romans 8:6;

Every generation has had difficulties, diseases, deaths, and destruction; ours is no different. That is why I find great comfort in God’s blessings of peace upon His own family.

As I close, let me write perhaps my favorite benediction as I pray you will receive this from our Abba Father (Mark 13:36). 

Benediction

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. (Num. 6:24-26 ESV)

Photo by Milada Vigerova on Unsplash

You may like:
https://rockexcavationservice.org/2019/06/10/see-measure-repeat/