The Bible tells us that in the beginning God spoke all that exists into existence. After each time God spoke and something came into existence, God saw and blessed what was. This creation account is not meant to be a scientific account, but theological. It tells us about God. It is God’s revelation of Godself and who we are in relationship with God. It tells us about the importance of the act of speaking and blessing. In church, we often talk about offering a blessing as giving the benediction. The final blessing for our Daily Office and Holy Eucharist liturgies are benedictions. That is, they are “good words spoken,” which is what benediction means. When God speaks, God breathes out blessing. Each time God says, “Let there be ...” something good is expired into being. The goodness of what exists is confirmed when the breath of God expires the words “it is good.” When God created humans in God’s image and gave us life, that same breath of blessing was spoken into us. The breath of blessing that God exhaled is what God used to give us life, to animate and inspire our being. Made in God’s image, we are vessels of that same breath of blessing. Gifted with this breath of blessing, we conspire with God in speaking blessing into the world.
It seems to me that so much of what we hear reported about the world around us is the absence of blessing. We hear instead bad news about misbehaving people, bad news about someone’s economic condition, bad news about someone’s health. Bad news about our church and political leaders. Bad news about the leaders of business. Bad news from nature or about the environment. Bad news from abroad. Bad news about bad people who seem intent on doing bad things to our nation. All this bad news certainly can lead to a sense of pessimism if not outright fear. One might wonder where is God’s blessing in all this. I suspect it might be closer than we realize. In fact, it might be at the tip of our tongues. As those created in the image of God and blessed with the breath of blessing, we should speak more good words. It would probably do all of us some good, and some of us a lot of good.
May God bless us as we speak blessing into a world that needs to hear a good word.
Fr Bill+