An Enduring Blessing
Enduring Blessing
What I really want to tell you
is to just lay this blessing
on your forehead,
on your heart;
let it rest
in the palm of your hand,
because there is hardly anything
this blessing could say,
any word it could offer
to fill the hollow.
Let this blessing
work its way
into you
with its lines
that hold nearly
unspeakable lament.
Let this blessing
settle into you
with its hope
more ancient
than knowing.
Hear how this blessing
has not come alone—
how it echoes with
the voices of those
who accompany you,
who attend you in every moment,
who continually whisper
this blessing to you.
find walls that can bear weight, to sort through the debris and retrieve what we can use.
Rebuilding a
ruin calls upon our imagination in a deeper, sharper way that romanticizing it does.
To restore what
has been destroyed, we have to resist seeing the landscape only the way it was, and learn to imagine
what is possible now.
When it comes to the losses and devastations around us and within us, how do we discern where God might
be calling us to begin the work of restoration? Not all ruins are meant for redemption, after all; some ruins
are for fleeing, not for fixing. How do we tell the difference?
Hear how they
do not cease
to walk with you,
even when the dark
is deepest.
Hear how they
encompass you always—
breathing this blessing to you,
bearing this blessing to you
still.
Photo by Anne Nygård on Unsplash