Blessings

Read Genesis 49:1-15.


I remember walking into the house. I had been called by the daughter because the time was near. Her mother was going to be leaving this world soon and they wanted someone to come pray with them. (By the way, as a side note, though I am honored to be called at such times and count praying with people in their last hours as a high privilege, remember that anyone can pray. There is no special prayer that a pastor says or anything a pastor does differently than you could.) So we gathered around the bedside and took the mother's hands and prayed. Then, in what I now realize is rather a surreal moment, the family and I gathered around the dining room table, just feet from where the mother was dying, to plan the funeral. We laughed, they told stories, we remembered, all while death hovered near.

It's one of those times I have to admit that sometimes it's weird being a pastor.

But I wonder if it wasn't something like that when the sons of Jacob, including Joseph, gathered around his deathbed for their final blessing. I always wondered how people in the Bible seem to know when the end is near, but I think it's because they lived so much closer to life and death than we do now. They saw it happen. We close people off in hospitals and nursing homes and funeral homes and rarely deal directly with death. Anyway, Jacob knows he is dying and he wants to give each of his sons one more blessing. He wants to, the text says, tell them what is to come for them and their family lines.

Have you every given or received a blessing? Yes, in many churches, we call the last thing the pastor says at the end of the service a "blessing," but in reality that should be a sending forth more than a blessing. A blessing is a word spoken over someone, a prayer of what you want them to become, a prayer that God will be active in their lives.

Have you ever given or received a blessing? I used to, when the kids were little, sneak into their rooms while they were sleeping and pray a blessing over them. I would entrust them to God and ask God to lead, guide and direct them all their days. (Now, I go to bed long before they do, so sneaking into their room is no longer an option.) I have stood by death beds as the living and the dying exchanged blessings with one another. I have watched as elderly grandparents shared a blessing with grandchildren. Not material things, but the words that we all need to hear: you are loved. You are valuable. You are becoming who God made you to be.

Have you ever given or received a blessing? Why not do so today?

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