Beauty.

What is blessing?  
The beauty of a sunset or a tree.  
The sound of a lovely tune, chords striking heart strings making us ache and rejoice at the same time.  
The savory, sour and sweet.  The satisfaction of a cheeseburger and milkshake.  The complexity of a fine wine. 
The vast expanse of stars pin pricked against the velvet of the night.  
The Order: the poetic nature of math and the order that exists in the very large swirling fiery galaxies down to the impossibly small un-observable particles that are dwarfed by atoms.  

These things are a blessing.  But they are a blessing that flows quite simply out of the nature of God.  It is simply who he is.  

The greater blessing for us is the ability to perceive these things.  Beauty would exist whether we knew it or not.  What does the worm know of these things?  In his great love, God has granted us the means by which to discover him, his nature, his goodness, his complexity.

My eyes behold impossible colors of the sunset.
My skin sighs with relief in the shade of a tree.
My ears marvel at the progression of a C chord to an A minor chord to a G chord and back to C, plucked by my own fingers.
To taste, oh to taste!
To drink in the sky!
To see symmetry, to see equations resolve, to look at the sun in all its rage and know that it is bound by the mind of God and the order he set forth at the beginning of time and all creation.

Lord, give us eyes to see and ears to hear.  
Jesus create in us a heart that can receive your greatest blessing: Your Love.

Matthew 13

“Though seeing, they do not see;

though hearing, they do not hear or understand.

14In them is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah:

“ ‘You will be ever hearing but never understanding;

you will be ever seeing but never perceiving.

15For this people’s heart has become calloused;

they hardly hear with their ears,

and they have closed their eyes.

Otherwise they might see with their eyes,

hear with their ears,

understand with their hearts

and turn, and I would heal them.’^a

16But blessed are your eyes because they see, and your ears because they hear. 17For truly I tell you, many prophets and righteous people longed to see what you see but did not see it, and to hear what you hear but did not hear it.

Psalm 51

Create in me a pure heart, O God,

and renew a steadfast spirit within me.

11Do not cast me from your presence

or take your Holy Spirit from me.

12Restore to me the joy of your salvation

and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me.