God spoke to Moses: “Tell Aaron and his sons, This is how you are to bless the People of Israel. Say to them,
God bless you and keep you,
God smile on you and gift you,
God look you full in the face and make you prosper.
-Numbers 6:22-26 (MSG)

God bless you.

We really throw that phrase around a lot, don’t we?

We write an e-mail and end it with the salutation, “God bless”. Someone sneezes, and we immediately reply, “Bless you”. I mean, do we really even know why we’re saying what we do, or has it all just become everyday jargon?

In chapter 6 of Numbers, God tells Moses specifically what Aaron is to say when blessing the Israelites. To be clear, we’re not talking about our modern day “blessing” here, but rather the real “God, I desperately want your divine favor to come upon this person” type of blessing. This is the real deal, and God breaks it down into 5 points:

  1. To protect
  2. To be pleased with
  3. To be gracious to
  4. To show approval of
  5. To give success to

Wow. Maybe it’s just me, but reading that gives “God bless you” a whole lot more meaning. That little phrase that we spit out daily is literally packed with power.

I’m not saying that it’s wrong to say “Bless you” when someone sneezes, but it’s clear here that God takes the idea of a blessing seriously. So seriously, that he laid it out word for word, line for line, to guarantee that all the bases were covered, intentions were pure, and the speaker understood its significance.

God, help me to demonstrate encouragement and your love through genuine blessing of others.

And selfishly, may God bless me.