Blessings and more blessings

I don’t know how many times I have read the book of Ephesians, 20, 30, 50? Who knows? Lots anyway. One of the best things about reading and rereading both Scripture and great literature is that you can come back to the same work over and over again and find new things. The new thing you find was always there but you weren’t able to see it or weren’t ready to see it.

Ephesians 1:3-14 is notable for a lot of things I suppose, not least of which is that in the original Greek it is a single sentence, but I noticed something new about it this time around. This section of Ephesians can be read as a spiral of blessing that begins about as big as it can be with “every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places” (Eph 1:3 NRSV) and tightens in focus getting more and more personal in the blessings.

I don’t recall seeing this scheme in any commentary so I don’t know if I got it from someone but if I did, it lay dormant for a long time. I hope you can see what I saw in the theme of blessings and if you think I might be a bit off in the spiral from big to small, or universal to personal, I also hope you let me know.

Knox Presbyterian Still more blessings!

St. Mark’s Presbyterian Still more blessings!

Blessings,