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The Lord bless you,
And keep you,
Make His face shine upon you,
And be gracious to you.
The Lord turn His face toward you,
And give you peace!
If you haven’t heard the song that begins with these lyrics, you need to go back 100 days and live life over again. You missed something!
The Blessing is a song by Kari Jobe and Cody Carnes. It was sung for the first time at Elevation Church in Charlotte, North Carolina.
You can easily search YouTube and find: The Blessing with Kari Jobe & Cody Carnes/Live From Elevation Ballantyne/Elevation Worship/premiered March 6, 2020.
If you search the song you will note that almost every church that has a singer and a guitar has now posted their own rendition. A worship leader at my church confessed that during the early days of the COVID Crisis that she listened to this song over and over every morning.
Personal confession: I still listen to this song several times a day.
All this repetition. The song itself has lots of repetition with verses and chorus sung over and over. There is a point in the song when “Amen”, which means “so be it”, repeats six times; also the phrase – “He is for you, He is for you, He is for you, He is for you, He is for you, He is for you”. Yep, repeated six times too. But, really, who can’t say “Amen” or “so be it” six times to “He is for you!”?
Let me repeat it again. You need to hear this: “He is for you!” Amen, Amen, Amen, Amen, Amen, Amen!
The composers say that the song is straight from the Bible. The verse, “The Lord bless you, And keep you, Make His Face shine upon you, And be gracious to you, The Lord turn His face toward you, And give you peace!” – comes directly from Numbers 6:24-26. There is a website that checks scriptural content of contemporary Christian songs (Yes, that’s right.) and it gives the song a score of 10 out of 10 for the lyrics lining up with scripture.
The song was written in a sort of jam session (I started hearing of jam sessions in the 60’s, during the hippie movement, but have never been a part of one myself.). Song writers and pastors from the Elevation Church wrote the song during this jam session in one afternoon.
Then Boom! Sung at the Elevation Church on March 6 right before the epoch-making-world-wide-shut-down-and-stay-at-home-or-be-shamed-and-nobody-coming-to-church-virus-crisis.
What else could we do but listen to The Blessing thousands of times? More than that, the version of this song that I mentioned previously has been viewed almost 19 million times on YouTube, and another version with an unplugged rendition of just Kari Jobe and Cody Carnes singing has 1.5 million views.
I have to admit that I personally have 100k of those views and have listened to the song six times while writing this Interruption.
As I have listened to The Blessing – over and over and over and over and over and over – I consider Romans 8:37-38:
We are more than conquerors. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
God has perfect timing. Nothing catches Him by surprise. There is something about a song, sung in the Spirit, that delivers from fear. The Blessing is a blessing by God for this time.
Blessing, Blessing, Blessing, Blessings, Blessings, Blessings – be with you today.
You should say, “Amen”. Say it six times, out loud, right now. People are looking at you, you wife is wondering, your children are snickering, your cat is purring. Say it again!
Amen, Amen, Amen, Amen, Amen, Amen!