From the Rev. Diana Peters

Bless the Lord, O my soul!  

What is a blessing?  How does a person bless someone.  And most baffling, how does one bless the Lord?  These are questions that keep coming up for me, especially now, when our stewardship campaign’s theme is “Blessed be the Lord God!”  But truthfully, I guess I’ve pondered those questions for most of my life.

I remember a confusing brush with those questions immediately after I was ordained as a priest. I didn’t know it at the time, but it’s an old tradition to kneel before a newly ordained priest for a blessing. So after my ordination I had several people kneeling before me to be blessed. And I didn’t have a clue what I was supposed to do!  Of course, I knew the words I was supposed to use. I had seen priests bless people before. But what exactly I was doing by saying those words, that was a total mystery to me. 

Well, here it is, twelve years later, and I’m still wrestling with those questions. I don’t have any definitive answers, but I have developed a few opinions over the years. 

What is a blessing?  I think a blessing is anything that enriches our life. Good health is a blessing. So is freedom from oppression. Likewise, you can see how an abundance of food, clothing, and personal possessions can enrich our life. Then there’s family and friends and our pets, who enrich our lives in so many ways. And the fact that we have meaningful work, reasonable recreation, and adequate rest can also be counted as blessings. 

How do we bless someone?  It seems to me that blessing someone doesn’t have to be a specific action such as making the sign of the cross, or uttering particular words like when someone sneezes and we say, “Bless you.”  It seems to me that blessing someone is really accomplished when we ourselves somehow become a blessing to another person. Wishing someone an enriched life is all well and good, but the real blessing is given when we ourselves enrich their lives through our prayers, words, or actions. A bedtime kiss can be a blessing, as can shoveling our neighbor’s walkway. Encouraging a friend is as much a blessing as donating food to a food bank. And praying for someone’s healing blesses just as surely as taking a casserole to someone who has lost a loved one. 

But  how do we bless the Lord?  After all, the Lord doesn’t need anything; God is the creator and owner of everything! So how do we bless the Lord?  I think Jesus helps us out with that answer. He said, “Whatsoever you do to the least of these, that you do unto me.” So we bless God when we answer the call to serve others, as Jesus did. We bless God when we “do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with your God,” as Micah advised. We bless the Lord when we give back to God a portion of what God has given to us, so that God’s work can be accomplished in the world. 

And when the very core of our being, our own immortal soul, unites with the mind of Christ in charity and love, then we indeed, bless the Lord.

Blessings to you –