“Bless you.”

I heard Neil chuckle under his breath as we walked away from the elderly  couple we had been talking with.

“Did you just bless them?” he asked.

“What’s wrong with that?”

“Nothing.  Very King James. “

Truthfully the words had just popped out.  But they’d been popping out a lot.  I had been blessing people right and left over the Christmas holidays.   Retail clerks, Walmart greeters, theatre ushers….it was getting kind of weird.    So I stopped – almost – saying it out loud.  But I still bless people in my head.

This morning I read Psalm 1.  It speaks of blessing.  It says we are blessed when we choose to follow God’s ways.  When we put God at the center of our lives.  It says when we live like that we are like trees planted by streams of water. Whatever we do prospers.

The accompanying devotional reading described being blessed as “divinely or supremely favored.  Fortunate.  Happy.  Content. “

That’s the blessing we pray over you – our Weekend to Remember alumni – as we enter 2012.  May you be blessed.  In your marriages.  In your families.  In whatever the year holds.  Remember, you are divinely favored.  That’s what the Christmas story is all about.  God so favored us that He gave us His only Son….

This year may you find your happiness and contentment in God’s outrageous love for you.  May you find happiness and contentment in your marriage.  In your family.  And may your happiness and contentment be contagious.

“Bless you.”

Along with our blessing comes a promise –  from all of us at FamilyLife –  to pray for you regularly in 2012.