As we begin this new week, we are a people hungry for healing — healing of our hearts, healing of our relationships, healing of our land. And yet we recognize that we can never heal from that which we cannot name, for there is a particular blessing that comes when we humbly confess all the ways we’ve gotten it wrong. Today, God, would you lead us to repentance? Lead us to the space where we can acknowledge all the ways we have been complicit in the broken systems that hurt and divide us. Show us a better way, a way of narrow paths that lead to wells of justice and springs of water in the desert of our polarized world.

And for those who begin this week with a spark of hope, I urge you to protect your joy. Tend to it, nurture it, care for it as you would something that is precious, like a new life in its first hour outside its mother’s womb. Your joy matters. Your hope is a gift. May you be blessed as you laugh and dance and celebrate and organize and plan and look ahead. May you be blessed by a dawn that looks, somehow, just a little bit brighter than it did yesterday.

And for those who begin the week with the weight of disappointment sitting in your belly, I pray you will find comfort. May you receive the gift of being humbled by the realization that Something far greater than ourselves is holding this all together. And may you know the peace of letting go what was so that you may make space for something beautiful and new.

And for all of us, may kindness be our language, and gentleness be our home. May we be quick to listen and slow to anger, as our God has taught us. May we grieve if we need to, dance if we must, and may we recognize that God is big enough to meet us in both. May we learn to have conversations again, conversations about hard things like race and politics and systemic change, without name-calling and jabbing insults. May we take care of one another this week, and may we become as careful gardeners, weeding out bitterness from the soil of our own hearts. And may we be watered with the knowledge we, as a people, have been called to strive towards what is good, what is right, what is true, what is kind, what is lovely, and that we are blessed when we are pure in heart, for then we shall see God.

You are loved this week, friends. This week, and every week.
——————————————————————————————————————–