From the UCC Network: 02/16/2011 "The Power in Blessing"

The Power in Blessing 

Excerpt from Numbers 6:22-27

"May the Lord bless you and take good care of you.  May the Lord smile on you and be gracious to you."

Reflection by Martin B. Copenhaver

There is great power in the act of blessing.  So why we don't offer more blessings for one another?

We may assume the people we care about don't need a blessing.  We think our children need advice.  We see that our parents need support.  A friend needs a listening ear.  A spouse needs a kind word.  Someone who has annoyed me needs a piece of my mind.  We may not consider that what someone may need more than anything else — what that person may be hungry for, in some cases dying of hunger for — is a blessing.

Or we may have concluded that someone doesn't deserve a blessing.  There is an old Gaelic blessing:  "May those who love us, love us.  And those who don't turn their hearts; and if those who don't turn their hearts, may they turn their ankles, so we'll know them by their limping."

Doesn't that capture the kind of blessings we are sometimes tempted to offer?  It's more like a curse — which, of course, is the opposite of a blessing.  Sometimes the good words stick on our tongues.

So it's important to remember that words of blessing are borrowed words.  We are asking God to bless because we may not have any good words of our own to offer.  To say, "May God bless you," is to borrow the power of God to offer good words when that seems beyond us.  It is asking God to take the lead.

Prayer

God bless those I would like to bless, and those I am unable to bless on my own.

About the Author Martin B. Copenhaver is Senior Pastor, Wellesley Congregational Church, United Church of Christ, Wellesley, Massachusetts. He is the author, with Lillian Daniel, of This Odd and Wondrous Calling: the Public and Private Lives of Two Ministers.