A BENEDICTION-BLESSING

There is a benediction-blessing floating around the Internet these days that is worthy of a discussion.  It appears in many forms, brief and expanded.  It is rarely documented, and fairly obscure to the protestant mind.  Nevertheless, it is a blessing worthy to pray. The origin of this Franciscan Blessing is not known. It's not a typical blessing we might expect to hear, but it's a good one.

May God bless you with discomfort...at easy answers, hard hearts, half-truths , and superficial relationships.

May God bless you so that you may live from deep within your heart where God's Spirit dwells.

May God bless you with anger...at injustice, oppression, and exploitation of people.

May God bless you so that you may work for justice, freedom, and peace.

May God bless you with tears... to shed for those who suffer from pain, rejection, starvation and war.

May God bless you so that you may reach out your hand to comfort them and turn their pain into joy.  

And may God bless you with enough foolishnessto believe that you can make a difference in this world, in your neighborhood, so that you will courageously try what you don't think you can do, but, in Jesus Christ you'll have all the strength necessary.

May God bless you to fearlessly speak out about injustice, unjust laws, corrupt politicians, unjust and cruel treatment of prisoners, and senseless wars,genocides, starvations, and poverty that is so pervasive.

May God bless you that you remember we are all called to continue God's redemptive workof love and healing in God's place, in and through God's name, in God's Spirit, continually creatingand breathing new life and grace into everything and everyone we touch.

Source: "Troubadour: A Missionary Magazine," published by the Franciscan Missionary Society, Liverpool, UK: Spring 2005.

A CONVERSATION

In J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, a young hobbit named, Frodo, is given the burden of bearing the one ring of power. It's a ring that has the potential to put Middle Earth under the suffering and pain of a deep darkness that is already exerting its influence. With a cadre of friends, Frodo determines to make the journey to Mount Doom, to destroy the ring by throwing it into the volcano from which it was constructed.

It would be a fearful journey through enemy territory, and imagining the road ahead of him, Frodo shares with Gandalf the Wise that the burden of the ring should not have been placed with him. In the conversation between Frodo and Gandalf we read,

“I wish it need not have happened in my time,” said Frodo.

“So do I,” said Gandalf “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”
                                      J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings 

(New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1994), 51.