Note reflections are not theological study
Spurgeon's Morning and Evening today starts with:
Deuteronomy 33:29
Deuteronomy 33:29 (LEB): 29 Blessed are you, O Israel. Who is like you, a people who is saved by Yahweh, the shield of your help, and who is the sword of your triumph, and your enemies, they shall fawn before you, and you shall tread on their backs.”
What is it to be saved by Yahweh? It is to be blessed... Material blessings are the cheapest understanding of this idea...
I feel such a strong need to even say that, in any of my public reflections to try to caveat every statement that someone hostile to my faith might say while reading, or get ahead of a bad idea a less mature Christian might hear me say without enough context... but ultimately these reflections are not deep study, and when I acknowledge that 'to be saved by God is to be blessed' I don't need to follow it up with "but not necessarily with money and possessions"... No, the truth of God flows from the Word and through our lives out of experience with him, and out of that intersection this morning do I proclaim I am blessed and saved by Yahweh...
The blessing is the saving, and the saving is the blessing. Apart from faith in Jesus, I see no way to understand this biblical truth appropriately. In Yahweh's divine grace he has called me - he is the shield of my help in what he has called me to. A simple summary is that he enables me to do the job he's given. This is why the saving is the blessing... Any creature is most happy, most safe, most successful when it is operating within the bounds of its design and purpose... An airplane is a fast mode of transportation but if you place it on the highway - outside the boundaries of the sky and put in the context it wasn't meant to operate it, it won't be a very fast or useful means of getting from A to B.
Yahweh's saving act of grace invites humans into the context whereby they can live according to their design and purpose. I believe the humanitarian efforts to unite humanity along common grounds are good-faith efforts doomed to fail because to be truly human is to be saved by the One Who Saves... Yahweh saves his people back to humanity (or forward to a new humanity - I'm not here to debate eschatology with anyone at the moment). In this grace is unity and freedom.
My reflections consistently revolve around what is becoming a central theme in my theology - the meaning of freedom in Jesus. He saved me back to being truly human, and in my humanity I freely choose to live my life in loyalty to the one who saves me. I'm only free to choose the right thing because he enabled me to. In making that choice, whatever it might be, if I choose the godly option it comes with the most blessing. That blessing is being conformed into the image and likeness of Jesus. Yahweh molds me into what it means to be hunman... Sanctification is the process by which we "more naturally" choose the godly thing. Because as our will is molded to his, our natural choice more often aligns with what God wants. The blessing has to be understood ultimately as being saved, as restoration... To see blessing as money or power or success is to remain broken, remaining broken is evidence of not being saved. ie. It's only by the saving power of Jesus that the blessing of being saved can be understood - this is how Paul can say that even blessings on earth are garbage compared to the glories of heaven.
The picture of the perfect human becomes more clear to me day by day as Jesus reveals himself to me, and I pray the freedom in Christ permeates my life quickly and deeply so that my free-will choice aligns with God's will for my life. In that state is shalom.