Blessed and Kept
May the Lord bless and keep you.
May the Lord's face shine on you and be gracious to you.
May the Lord look kindly on you and give you peace.
(from Numbers 6)These beautiful ancient words have been spoken over people for thousands of years. They orient us in the reality of God's blessing which rests on each of us from the beginning of time. Words of blessing remind us of what we may have forgotten, inform us of what we may not know, and actually create the world of which they speak.May you be BLESSED and KEPT by God... may you be held in God's loving embrace. Never alone. Never abandoned. Held continually and eternally by divine love.May the LIGHT of God's own face shine on you... as the rays of the sun shine fill your whole body with warmth, and light, may the light that is greater than the sun, the light that created the brightest light we know, shine onto and into you that you may have with light within and without, warmed and filled.May the Lord be GRACIOUS to you... good gifts freely given, day after day. Treated with kindness, given the benefit of the doubt, sins erased. In contrast to the harsh rule of judgement, grace extended over and over again.May the Lord LOOK KINDLY upon you... God's face, God's own face turned toward you. With worlds upon worlds that need divine attention, wars and famine and disease. But God, with the infinite capacity to focus on even the smallest of all creation, looks right at you. With kindness. With love. Not filling you with fear. But giving you peace.
May the Lord bless and keep you.
May the Lord's face shine on you and be gracious to you.
May the Lord look kindly on you and give you peace.