Keeping the Feast through Blessing

“Alleluia. Christ our Passover has been sacrificed for us; 
therefore let us keep the feast,
Not with the old leaven, the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. Alleluia.”
-From 1 Cor. 5:7-8

It’s still Eastertide. Alleluia! If you’re like me, your energy starts to flag part way into the feasting seasons (I always seem to hit a wall on the 9th Day of Christmas). But I believe that celebration—even (especially?) in the already-but-not-yet of our time in history—is a discipline worth cultivating. In these final days of Eastertide, I’ve been reflecting on what it means to keep this new kind of feast full of sincerity, truth, and the hope of resurrection. I’d love to hear how you’ve been keeping the feast.

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There’s a poem I love by Yehuda Amichai that I came across in a delightful little collection of poems on the nature of joy. It observes how many ways we have to vividly describe our pains—throbbing, wrenching, gnawing, burning, sharp, dull—yet how our language is so much more “blurry” when it comes to describing joy.  He has this fabulous line at the end of the poem:

“The blurriness of joy and the precision of pain - 

I want to describe, with a sharp pain’s precision, happiness 

and blurry joy. I learned to speak among the pains.”

From the moment I read it, I’ve taken it as almost a benediction of sorts. As I’ve carried those words with me over the past several years, it’s helped me notice other dimensions where this blurriness/precision dynamic is at work. One of these areas that Eastertide highlights for me particularly is fear and hope.

As Amichai puts it, we have “learned to speak” among our fears. And that’s no cause for judgment; as we have seen so vividly in recent weeks, it is truly a frightening world. As a result, we have countless ways to describe fear—gripping, persistent, paralyzing, overwhelming, driving, underlying. Our language to describe our hopes, even our most deeply held ones—is more limited and less specific—“I hope it goes well!” “Anything can happen!” “You never know!” “All the best!” “Here’s hoping!”

Jesus’s first words to the apostles were specific when he appears to them after his resurrection were “Peace”—the shalom of God, the drumbeat of God’s goodness to his people all through the generations—“be with you!” His words cut through our native tongue of fear, offering us a new language of hope, not outside of, but right in the midst of our fears. 

What if the words of hope and blessing we shared with each other were as vivid as our descriptions of what we fear? What if we spoke blessings that were so specific and so nearly tangible, that not just our hearts but even our bodies and breath responded?  To echo Amichai, I want to describe, with fear’s precision, hope. I wonder what might happen next if we prepared a table in the presence of one another and offered each other a feast of blessing.

Bedtime Blessing

One of the ways I’ve been practicing this is lingering after bedtime prayers (and before the onslaught of kleenex/sip of water/one more stuffed animal requests) to speak words of blessing over each child. It’s been meaningful for them and for me. 

The safety and well-being of my kids is the primary place where I am “fluent in fear,” so to speak. Over the years, images of my worst case scenarios for them have been vivid, while the language—even in prayer—for the hopes I have for them has been blurry. Scripture has been a guide in speaking words of blessing that are specific and are giving me an imagination for who God has made them to be, the ways they might know and love him, and how the gifts God has given them might bless those around them and usher in his Kingdom.

Here are a few of the passages that have been particularly helpful in expanding my language of hope and blessing. I’ve found that the psalms and several of the benedictions and prayers in the New Testament epistles are great places to start.

Ephesians 1:15-19

For this reason, ever since I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all God’s people, I have not stopped giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers. I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people, and his incomparably great power for us who believe.

2 Thessalonians 3:5

May the Lord direct your hearts into God’s love and Christ’s endurance.

Psalm 86:11

Teach me your way, O Lord, that I may walk in your truth; unite my heart to fear your name.

Philippians 1:9-11

And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God.

Colossians 1:9-12

And so, from the day we heard, we have not ceased to pray for you, asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him: bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God; being strengthened with all power, according to his glorious might, for all endurance and patience with joy; giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in light.

Psalms 33:20-22 

Our soul waits for the Lord; he is our help and our shield. For our heart is glad in him, because we trust in his holy name. Let your steadfast love, O Lord, be upon us, even as we hope in you.

Numbers 6:24-26 

The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face shine on you and be gracious to you; the Lord turn his face toward you and give you peace.

Romans 15:13

I pray that God, the source of hope, will fill you completely with joy and peace because you trust in him. Then you will overflow with confident hope through the power of the Holy Spirit.

Note: Several of these were written as communal, not merely individual, blessings for God’s people. I think that context is very important, and we do talk about it with our kids often when we pray these words over them. And yet, it is my sincere desire that the Spirit would transform their hearts that these words might be true of them, even as he builds and transforms his Church.