The Blessing of God Himself

My mum has a phrase I've heard her use a few times in prayers etc which is that God has blessed us with Himself.

It has a nice Exodus ring to it, reminding me of 'I am your very great reward', and things like that. We are both God's treasured possession, and he is ours (with a different use of the word possession of course).

It makes me wonder about what it is exactly we should want most from God. We are promised material blessings (at the very least in heaven), and we are promised spiritual blessings, and we are promised peace that transcends understanding (as Jenny pointed out in a previous post).

But whenever I start praying without any clear idea of what it is I'd like to say, I always find myself marvelling at the fact that I can call God 'dad', and that I can talk to him wherever and whenever, and I can say whatever is on my mind, and I can know that he cares. All this despite being the creator of the universe. It's nuts. I should never have been given access to someone like that. But through Jesus, I have. The magnitude of it is so overwhelmingly large that the significance is often lost or not appreciated. It's a really huge thing, right?

It reminds me of John Piper's mantra God is most glorified through (in?) us when we are most satisfied in him.

The person of God, and our direct, intimate access to him, is the biggest blessing one can have. It helps me to undestand why suffering is such a  necessary part of Christian growth. We need to peel away at all the other things we value and take meaning from, until finally we are grasping only to God as our meaning and purpose and fulfilment and whatever else. I can't even imagine how liberating that would be...