If This Blessing Were Easy

Family is complicated, as we talked about on Sunday. And yet God is at work in our families, bringing not only healing but blessing.

Sit with this poem today and let the Spirit speak to you. The image behind the poem comes from Genesis 32:22-32 where Jacob is anxious about his strained relationship with his brother and spends the night wrestling with God, ending up with a limp.

Jacob’s Blessing
By Jan Richardson

If this blessing were easy,

anyone could claim it.

As it is,

I am here to tell you

that it will take some work.

This is the blessing

that visits you

in the struggling,

in the wrestling,

in the striving.

This is the blessing

that comes

after you have left

everything behind,

after you have stepped out,

after you have crossed

into that realm

beyond every landmark

you have known.

This is the blessing

that takes all night

to find.

It’s not that this blessing

is so difficult,

as if it were not filled

with grace

or with the love

that lives

in every line.

It’s simply that

it requires you

to want it,

to ask for it,

to place yourself

in its path.

It demands that you

stand to meet it

when it arrives,

that you stretch yourself

in ways you didn’t know

you could move,

that you agree

to not give up.

So when this blessing comes,

borne in the hands

of the difficult angel

who has chosen you,

do not let go.

Give yourself

into its grip.

It will wound you,

but I tell you

there will come a day

when what felt to you

like limping

was something more

like dancing

as you moved into

the cadence

of your new

and blessed name.