What's a Blessing Worth?, e2

So how many spiritual people, much less irreligious people, really grasp what a "blessing" would be worth?  :- )  If a Transcendent Creator existed, and commanded that your life be prospered, what would the cash value of such a "contract" be?

Deu 30:19  I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live:

If we asked the man running the cash register at the 7-11, "Would you care for a blessing?  I can deliver it!"  What would he say?  "Um, okay, I guess.  Would I have to go to church services?"

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The French painter Paul Cezanne had notes referring to a lost painting, Maison Dixon with a View of Chateau Poof.  For 60 years, it had been missing.  Then in the 1950's, art collector Mark Caywood came across a VERY good copy of it, in a garage sale in Nice...

How did that owner get it?  Bought it for $5 from a mental hospital, where it had been sitting for years.  So here it was, sitting in a flea market... Caywood looked closer and his heart started racing.  Could it be?

It was.  Caywood bought it for a few bucks.

The painting had the same value, whether the flea market salesman knew what it was worth, or whether he didn't.  It had value.  The owner of the painting was simply oblivious to the value.

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In Heb. 12:15-17, Esau is chided for failing to realize what Isaac's blessing was worth:

Heb 12:15  Looking diligently lest any man fail of the grace of God; lest any root of bitterness springing up trouble you, and thereby many be defiled;

Heb 12:16  Lest there be any fornicator, or profane person, as Esau, who for one morsel of meat sold his birthright.

Heb 12:17  For ye know how that afterward, when he would have inherited the blessing, he was rejected: for he found no place of repentance, though he sought it carefully with tears.

Manhattan Island was purchased in 1626 for the equivalent value of about 1.5 pounds of silver.  Not that the Native Americans were going to build skyscrapers on it.  But the cheapest acre you could buy on that Island, today, would be about $900,000.  You couldn't buy the island for $50 billion.

The Native Americans were not looking at it as a commodity to hold for future generations to profit from.  Not that it is to their discredit; the point is, they were not seeing it as it would be in the future.  They were (undoubtedly) seeing it in terms of deer population, running water, and things like that.

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In 1808, Thomas Jefferson was having trouble getting Napoleon to sign off on America's use of the port of New Orleans.  He sent two ambassadors to Napoleon to purchase long-term rights to the port.

Napoleon stunned them by saying that he didn't want to sell the rights to the port and didn't want to sell New Orleans.  He demanded that either they purchase the entire Louisiana Territory for $15 million, or there was no deal.

Accounts say that the two ambassadors -- who had no authority to make the deal -- were shaking as they signed the contract.

That's 3 center per acre for all of the wheat fields of Kansas, all of the corn fields of Iowa, the Mississippi River, and everything else contained in that area.  Think France would like to have that one back?

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We can get ourselves into a lot of trouble, when we enter into decisions not knowing what the commodities are worth.  :- )

Is there such a thing as a spiritual Louisiana Purchase available to us?  What is a blessing, anyway?

image:  http://www.washington.edu/uwired/outreach/cspn/Website/Graphics/LA%20Purchase%20Map.jpg