Eulogies
God bless the Queen. These are the sentiments coming from around the world as the longest reigning monarch passed away on Thursday. It is truly remarkable to think that as a princess she addressed WWII soldiers. As Queen, she oversaw fifteen British prime ministers, including Winston Churchill and — entering office a few days ago — Liz Truss. In the coming days, people will say many kind things about her. When we speak kind words for those who have departed, we often use the term “eulogize”. Literally a eulogy is a Greek mashup of eu, meaning good, and logos meaning word. Thus, eulogy means to say a good word.
I highlight this because our text this week is full of eulogizing. “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places”. The word “blessed” in this verse is the word eulogize. Three times Paul speaks of the “eulogizing” that goes on between God and his people. That we should bless him is no shocking thing, for indeed he is worthy of every good word that we can conjure up. But that he should eulogize us with every spiritual eulogy, that is something to mark and to celebrate!
I am not sure what your week was like this week, nor how your day is going today. But the promise of Ephesians 1:3 is that if you are “in Christ”, i.e. surrendered to him in faith, He is even right now cheering you on with good words of encouragement. Bless him indeed!
I am really looking forward to this study in Ephesians. Sunday we will look closely at Ephesians 1:3-6, though as I mentioned before, 1:3-14 constitutes all one sentence for Paul!
Photo by Rainier Ridao on Unsplash