This Holy Week, there will be a blessing each day.
John 1:5
The light shines in the darkness,
and the darkness has not overcome it.
A Blessing: for Good Friday
Oh dear God, light the way
for this heart-heavy earth,
for the helpless and hopeless,
for those drowning in grief,
or fear or depression,
for the tired and harried
and the at-the-end-of-their-rope,
for those weary of their sins
and those who aren’t,
and for me, too.
The thick of dusk has fallen
and betrayal seems the order of the day.
The night when Love itself
was handed over
to brutal ignorance
and cunning that loves deceit
Oh God, you chose to feel what we feel-
to be spit on, ridiculed, tortured, and to die all alone.
In your outstretched arms on the cross,
are you gathering to yourself every hideous thing,
every failure, travesty, and wrong?
Blessed are we who say:
Yes! Take this pain.
Turn things right side up again.
I can see, only now,
that you will follow me to the end and beyond.
The day love died, something new was born,
and may we be a people open to the grief,
the loss, and then, yes,
the rising of the Son.
~ Kate Bowler, The Lives We Actually Have
Blessings, Kathi
