Twenty-seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time
October 3, 2021
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we pray with Psalm 128 which offers us a tender blessing. One of the most striking phrases of the blessing is “May you see your children’s children.”
Behold, thus is the one blessed
based on Psalm 128
who lives in awe of the LORD.
The LORD bless you:
may you see the prosperity of heart
all the days of your life.
May you see your children’s children.
Peace be upon you always!
May the Lord bless us all the days of our lives.
Indeed, how grateful we are for the children in our families — no matter how old they are! What a gift to be renewed by their simplicity, openness, courage and dearness.
What a joy to watch these next generations rise to their adulthood in grace and honor. What a particular blessing to live to see their children claim a heritage of life and goodness.
How important it is to let our younger family and friends know how we love them, what great hope and joy we find in them, how grateful we are for them. We should pray constantly for their life in the Spirit, for their strength in this shifting world, and for their friendship with God. We should be light for them, as our elders have been for us.
May we never take for granted what we have been given by the ones who come after us, who carry our hope and life into the future.
(In a separate post today, I offer a story you might enjoy about one way I tried to live by my own counsel in this regard.)
Poetry: Testament by Carolyn M. Rodgers
child,
in the august of your life
you come barefoot to me
the blisters of events
having worn through to the
soles of your shoes.
it is not the time
this is not the time
there is no such time
to tell you
that some pains ease away
on the ebb & toll of
themselves.
there is no such dream that
can not fail, nor is hope our
only conquest.
we can stand boldly in burdening places (like earth here)
in our blunderings, our bloomings
our palms, flattened upward or pressed,
an unyielding down.
Music: – sung by the inimitable Bob Dylan, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature – a singer whom one either loves or hates. I hope you love his rendition of Forever Young.
Lavish Mercy 