Every day will I bless You and I will praise Your name forevermore, and to the ages of ages.
I will cause Your name to be celebrated in all generations; therefore the peoples will praise You forever and ever.
Psalm 45:17
The first several lines of the Doxology establish the identity of the Holy Trinity, and make particular detail about the person of Jesus Christ. Now that we have established this identity for ourselves—what we believe and who it is we worship, we now move toward our purpose, which is to live for God. What exactly does that mean?
The word for prayer in Greek is “prosefhi,” which is comprised of two small words “pros” meaning “toward” and “efhi” meaning “blessing.” Thus, prayer literally means “towards a blessings.” In Orthodox liturgical practice, when a Bishop is serving, he offers a blessing throughout the service on the priest or deacon who will offer the next line of the service. In other words, a priest or deacon will bow to the Bishop, receive his blessing, and then offer the next petition. While this may seem like a lot of bowing and a lot of blessing, it helps to keep good order in the service, so that two people aren’t offering the same petition, or becoming confused as to who will say what. It also offers a metaphor for our lives. There are roughly 85 lines of the Divine Liturgy, and on an average day we make 85 decisions. Some of these decisions are inconsequential, such as do we have an orange or an apple with lunch. However, many of these decisions do have consequences, such as the choice to speed in our car when we are late getting somewhere, or telling a lie to cover up a truth we’d rather not reveal, or doing the thing that leads us to feel the need to lie. Imagine if we made every one of our decisions under the umbrella of God’s blessings, if we offered a pros-efhi before making every decision. Imagine how different life might be. This is what it means to live for Christ. It means to do everything with His blessing. It doesn’t mean that we can’t ever have fun. It means that whether we are doing something for fun, or something serious, we do whatever we do under the umbrella of God’s blessings, we seek to do the things that God would bless and if we can’t do it with the blessing of God, then we simply don’t do it.
The line of the Doxology that we examine in this reflection reminds us that every day is an occasion to bless God and praise His name. If we are really serious about praising and blessing His name forevermore, that means we need to be intentional not only on each day but throughout each day that everything we do reflects of our praise of God and His blessing (endorsement) on us.
Each morning, as we ponder what the day ahead will bring, and we begin to formulate decisions about the opportunities at hand, we should give thought to how we will praise and bless God on a particular day. If, in our prayers, we ask for God’s will to be done, and we pray for an opportunity to serve God by serving someone else, then we should pray that God will be praised through our work on a particular day.
Today’s verse from Psalm 45:17 says “I will cause Your name to be celebrated in all generations; therefore the peoples will praise You forever and ever.” Have you ever done anything that would cause God’s name to be celebrated? Do we even think in such terms? What a great goal—to do something that would not cause us to be celebrated but would be a cause for God’s name to be celebrated; if, instead of doing something that would cause us to be praised, if we could do something and the result would be God’s name being praised. In a world where we seek out approval and praise, where we enjoy being celebrated and oftentimes work toward that as a goal, how wonderful it would be to make the approval, praise and celebration of God by others our goal, if God could be celebrated through our good work in addition to, or even instead of us.
Lord, I praise and bless Your Holy name. Help me to have You in mind in all the decisions I make today. May I seek your blessing and seek to do everything under the umbrella of Your blessing. May my life reflect praise of You, and may others come to know You, to praise You and to bless You because of my example. Amen.
Ask God for His “efhi” (blessing) before making decisions today. Give some thought to how you can bless and praise God today. Give some thought at how others might praise God through something you do today!
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