Blessings

By Pastor Paul Gauche

Today’s Word: ‘Blessings’ as in… they do occur.

One of my dearest and closest life-long friends sent me a poem today. ‘Blessings’ by the poet Ronald Wallace is one of those poems that you want to read more than a few times; the kind you return to like you return to a photograph or a painting that keeps revealing things even when you’re not looking at it.

Honestly, it would be a shame to miss even one syllable of this poem.

My friend serves as a chaplain in a Portland hospital. Each day he walks into the lives of people whose names we’ll never know, whose faces we’ll never see, whose circumstances we can’t begin to imagine. But he does, and he can. He is a blessing to them and in some mystical way, they are a blessing to him. With strategies of hope and wholeness already in place for supporting families that are dealing with the coronavirus, he and his colleagues are equally diligent about the strategies for their own health and wellbeing as they walk deeply into every precious life. And they do so with the expectation that there will be at least one moment that conveys blessing on everyone. This much they know: blessings occur. You might want to read this at least a couple of times.

#100days50words

Paul Gauche is the Pastor of Life Transitions at Prince of Peace. His posts are part of his #100days50works project, where be blogs about a different word each day. You can follow his project on Instagram (@pgauche), or on his blog, Thriving Rhythms.