Bless and be blessed

"The LORD bless you and keep you; the LORD make his face shine on you and be gracious to you; the LORD turn his face toward you and give you peace." Numbers 6. 24-26

We can be so overwhelmed by grief and outrage that we go into overdrive in order to fix the situation - as if everything depended on us and we have to make it happen. This is a natural reaction and commendable insofar as we are acting on our instinctive neighbourliness and deploying skills and resources which are undeniably ours. But we can forget that, useful and necessary as these gestures are, they remain inadequate. They may help mitigate the problem but they will never solve it.

A more measured and modest approach recognises the depth of the predicament and the limit of our ability to address it. Faith enables us to see God in the situation - for whom all things are possible. We know that he is both alongside and above those involved. As such God shares their pain and will bring about their healing. That may happen directly or through others, in our lifetime or beyond. God knows best so we should trust him.

In contributing what we can, let us do so in the spirit of the so-called Aaronic (or priestly) blessing (above), which commends those we serve into the hands and heart of God. God's grace meets our every need; God's peace exceeds our wildest hopes and dreams for quality of life. And because God chooses to operate through those who believe, his grace and peace flow through those who pray it upon others...