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Minister Jan Richardson offers these insights.

A blessing is not complete until we let it do its work within us and then pass it along, an offering grounded in the love that Jesus goes on to speak of this night. Yet we cannot do this—as the disciples could not do this—until we first allow ourselves to simply receive the blessing as it is offered: as gift, as promise, as sign of a world made whole.” (Jan Richardson)

To Receive a Blessing

Have you ever noticed that it is much easier to give a gift than to receive one?

“Sometimes it can be daunting to receive a blessing because it requires something of us. It does not leave us unchanged. A blessing offers us a glimpse of the wholeness that God desires for us and for the world, and it beckons us to move in the direction of this wholeness. It calls us to let go of what hinders us, to cease clinging to the habits and ways of being that may have become comfortable but that keep us less than whole.

This can take some work.

How might God be calling you to find communion with others?

Part of the challenge involved with a blessing is that receiving it actually places us for a time in the position of doing no work—of simply allowing it to come. For those who are accustomed to constantly doing and giving and serving, being asked to stop and receive can cause great discomfort. To receive a blessing, we have to give up some of our control. We cannot direct how the blessing will come, and we cannot define where the blessing will take us. We have to let it do its own work in us, beyond our ability to chart its course.” (Jan Richardson)

Receive the gift of blessing,

For Holy Thursday

As if you could

stop this blessing

from washing

over you.

As if you could

turn it back,

could return it

from your body

to the bowl,

from the bowl

to the pitcher,

from the pitcher

to the hand

that set this blessing

on its way.

As if you could

change the course

by which this blessing

flows.

As if you could

control how it

pours over you—

unbidden,

unsought,

unasked,

yet startling

in the way

it matches the need

you did not know

you had.

As if you could

become un-drenched.

As if you could

resist gathering it up

in your two hands

and letting your body

follow the arc

this blessing makes.

—Jan Richardson

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