The Power of Blessings

My friend Dana, who is also a Presbyterian Minister, met many years ago at a Transitional Ministry Training when he was my guide on my first “pub crawl.” And we’ve continued to keep in touch and talk on the phone regularly. During a particularly low period in my life emotionally, at the beginning of one of our conversations, he read from a book by Irish poet, John O’Donohue, To Bless the Space Between Us. Dana read the blessing “For the Interim Time.” The blessing named my confusion, my lostness, my frustration to know my way forward. The blessing begins,

When near the end of the day, life has drained

Out of light, and it is too soon

For the mind of night to have darkened things,

No place looks like itself, loss of outline

Makes everything look strangely in-between,

Unsure of what has been, or what might come.

In this wan light, even trees seem groundless.

In a while it will be night, but nothing

Here seems to believe the relief of dark.

You are in this time of the interim

Where everything seems withheld.

The path you took to get here has washed out;

The way forward is still concealed from you.

The old is not old enough to have died away;

The new is still too young to be born.

O’Donohue writes that despite all the darkness in our lives, human hope is based on the instinct that at the deepest level of reality some intimate kindness has the power to move us in a different direction, this is the heart of blessing.

In Jesus’ day, blessings were seen as a direct indication of divine favor. It was simple “cause and effect.” If you were wealthy, healthy, and happy, it was because you were a good person. If you were poor, hungry, grieving, and hated, it was because you deserved to be. Remember Job? When he’d lost everything in the world there was to lose, his friends struck another blow, “What did you do to deserve this? You must’ve made God really unhappy.” This is the opposite of what Jesus teaches.

Jesus’ sermon in Luke’s Gospel is similar to Jesus’ sermon in Matthew 5, the Beatitudes. During the time of Luke's account, the wealthy, the religious, and the powerful Jewish elite looked down on this crowd who came to be healed in body and spirit. Jesus had been in the mountains praying and came down and joined the disciples and the multitude of people who had gathered. Jesus healed their bodies and those who were troubled were cured in mind and spirit, Then he said something truly radical. He called them blessed.

“Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled. Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh. Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man. Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven.”

We hear the blessings for those on the margins. Jesus tells them, “Rejoice and leap for joy, for your reward will be great.”

Jesus then addresses those who have plenty. “But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation. Woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry. Woe to you who are laughing now, for you will mourn and weep. Woe to you when all speak well of you, for that is what their ancestors did to the false prophets.”

When I read the lectionary, the verses we read ended with a dark reality for the “woes” to those who were chastised for their selfishness. The lectionary verses didn’t include the rest of Jesus’ sermon. If we read further in Luke 6, verses 27, 28, 35,36 to hear Jesus’ words for all of us.

“But I say to you that listen, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you…But love your enemies, do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return. Your reward will be great,... Be merciful, just as the Lord is merciful.”

Love, do good, bless, pray… Be merciful. One meaning of merciful is “to bring someone relief.

Jeremiah says to the Israelites facing another exile into Babylon: “Thus says the Lord: Cursed are those who trust in mere mortals and make mere flesh their strength, whose hearts turn away from the Lord.6 They shall be like a shrub in the desert, and shall not see when relief comes. They shall live in the parched places of the wilderness, in an uninhabited salt land. 7 Blessed are those who trust in the Lord, whose trust is the Lord. 8 They shall be like a tree planted by water, sending out its roots by the stream. It shall not fear when heat comes, and its leaves shall stay green; in the year of drought it is not anxious, and it does not cease to bear fruit.”

For the reality of life is that we will inevitably live in both conditions—trusting in God, and trusting in ourselves. The Lord says we are cursed when we trust in ourselves. We rely on our own strength and resources when we don’t cultivate a deeper relationship with God. Because we are focused on what we can and are doing, we miss what God is doing.

Blessed are those who trust in the Lord. Their roots are grounded in their relationship with God. They will not fear during life’s dry arid moments. They stay flexible and are not hardened by circumstances. They will not be anxious when it seems like strength and resources are in short supply.

Each of us has the power to bless and/or curse, This is an intentional choice we make in each encounter we have. John O’Donohue writes that each of us has a quiet light that shines in every heart from which blessings are possible. As the Bible says, “Now we see through a glass darkly” and yet it is here in between that our most creative conflicts and challenges come. This is why we need blessing. My friend Dana brought relief to my confusion and uncertainty with his gift of blessing that named my fears, that refreshed me and led me to see more clearly through the work of the Spirit.

To bless someone

is to say yes to who they are

to say that

inside of them

God has stored

something God is saving. Now.

something God is saving

for others

and himself.

something good.

something good is always being redeemed

by God

inside of us.

ihave you noticed it lately?

have you blessed God’s handiwork in someone else?

bless it. Now. Affirm what God is doing

even if its shape is new

to you… or someone else.