{"id":11686,"date":"2024-01-16T00:00:46","date_gmt":"2024-01-15T16:00:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/acky4.com\/wp\/?p=11686"},"modified":"2024-01-17T07:16:12","modified_gmt":"2024-01-16T23:16:12","slug":"the-greater-blessing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/acky4.com\/wp\/2024\/01\/16\/the-greater-blessing\/","title":{"rendered":"The Greater Blessing"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Luke 11:27-28 <em><sup>27<\/sup>And it happened, as he was saying these things, a certain woman in the crowd raised her voice and said to him, \u201cBlessed is the womb that bore you, and the breasts at which you nursed!\u201d <sup>28<\/sup>But he said, \u201cIndeed more so, blessed are those who hear the word of God and keep it!\u201d<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">An unnamed woman was quite impressed with all that Jesus was doing. She spoke as a proud mother, probably having born children herself. Mothers are the number one fans of their children. This woman looked at Jesus and knew he had a proud mother someplace. She was seeing Jesus from an earthly perspective. There is nothing wrong with a mother&#8217;s pride of the accomplishments of her son, but a godly mother will look deeper than any earthly accomplishments.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Jesus highlights the more important accomplishment in verse 28. The opening word (<em>menoun<\/em>) in Jesus&#8217; response to the woman is rare and only occurs four times in the New Testament. It can be translated in several ways, which might influence how Jesus responded to the woman and the implied meaning about Mary, Jesus&#8217; mother. It can mean &#8220;on the contrary,&#8221; meaning that what Jesus said next would be the opposite of what the woman said, or it can mean &#8220;indeed&#8221; in the form of a confirmation of what she said.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Jesus seems to acknowledge the significance of what the woman said, that indeed it was a blessing to have a son who lives in righteousness and can do miracles. But then Jesus moves her onward and upward to see what was more important. The greater blessing (<em>makarioi<\/em>) was for her to respond to God&#8217;s word and live it out. That blessing is open to all people. One does not need to be a proud mother to receive this blessing. Jesus essentially opens the door to the kingdom, inviting everyone to experience the great blessing of discipleship.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">For older posts, click\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/acky4.com\/wp\/blog\/\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Luke 11:27-28 27And it happened, as he was saying these things, a certain woman in the crowd raised her voice and said to him, \u201cBlessed is the womb that bore you, and the breasts at which you nursed!\u201d 28But he said, \u201cIndeed more so, blessed are those who hear the word of God and keep [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11686","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-devotions","post-preview"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/acky4.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11686","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/acky4.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/acky4.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/acky4.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/acky4.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11686"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/acky4.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11686\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11699,"href":"http:\/\/acky4.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11686\/revisions\/11699"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/acky4.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11686"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/acky4.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11686"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/acky4.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11686"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}