One of our most meaningful family traditions is to make the sign of the cross on the foreheads of our four children each night before they go to sleep and to offer a blessing, using their names: “Emily Elizabeth, child of God, you are sealed with the Holy Spirit and marked with the cross of Christ forever, Amen.”
This tradition not only affirms their baptisms, but it affirms a world view and it looks to the future. Blessings connect us to the past and to the present, and change the way we envision life and ourselves, says Gary Gunderson.
Some religious traditions also offer opportunities for congregants to receive a blessing, as well as an anointing with oil.
Our family has participated in this blessing at Duke Chapel during times when one of us is facing a difficult decision or a grandparent is in need of special care. This sacred act symbolizes the ways in which we are sustained and made whole again, though we come each week to worship fragmented and broken.
Yet despite the possibilities for blessing at home, in our private lives, or in our corporate worship, most of us don’t have similar avenues for blessing in our vocational lives.
Do we have a sense of deep blessing in our vocational settings?
How might we, as institutional leaders, bless the work in a way that is appropriate, sensitive and valuable, and in a way that helps contribute to thriving communities that are signs of the reign of God?
Beginning or ending a meeting in prayer is a simple and effective way of bringing blessing to a community. For those who would like to bless work just begun or work completed, the following ritual created by UMC pastor Grace Hackney could be used or adapted:
Leader: I invite you all to stand, if you are able, and to stretch out a hand over the oil jar on the table, as we give thanks for the gift of oil and ask God’s Spirit to abide in it.
Gracious God of life and health,
We give you thanks for this gift of oil.
Pour out your Holy Spirit on us and on this gift,
that those who receive it may be blessed and made whole,
and that our spirits may be sustained by you as we leave this place.
Through Jesus Christ our Lord, AMEN.
Now I invite each of you to turn to a person next to you and read to them the blessing from Deuteronomy, found on the cards on your tables. Then make the sign of the cross with oil on your partner’s forehead or the back of their hand, to consecrate and dedicate his or her life and work. Then that person will face you and read the blessing to you, anointing you also.
“And all these blessings shall come upon you and overtake you, if you obey the Lord your God:
Blessed shall you be in the city, and blessed shall you be in the field.
Blessed shall be the fruit of your womb, the fruit of your ground, and the fruit of your livestock, both the increase of your cattle and the issue of your flock.
Blessed shall be your basket and your kneading bowl.
Blessed shall you be when you come in, and blessed shall you be when you go out.”
Deuteronomy 28: 2-6.
