A chaos of blessing.

For the past couple years, we’ve emphasized blessing.  The kind of blessing where you mark the sign of the cross on another’s forehead and remind them of God’s love for them.  We encourage that kind of blessing to happen at home.  Lots of that kind of blessing happens on Sunday mornings when there is a baptism and lots of that kind of blessing happens at confirmation every Wednesday.  To close our confirmation class, we stand in a circle and we bless each other.  We make the sign of the cross on each other’s foreheads and say something a la You are a beloved child of God.

The confirmation kids might have thought it was a little awkward to begin with, pushing someone else’s hair out of the way and touching someone else’s forehead to offer such words, but now it’s just normal.  If we didn’t end confirmation with a blessing, that would now be weird.  And yesterday, during Sunday School, a pretty cool thing happened that involved confirmation students and blessing.

There were a handful of confirmation students who helped with Sunday School yesterday. They dressed up as disciples and told us all about how they follow Jesus; it was pretty awesome and fun.  As the Sunday School hour wrapped up, it was time for our blessing.  I employed the confirmation students to bless the Sunday School kids … and they went crazy.

It was like a chaos of blessing!  Confirmation students making the sign of the cross on foreheads and speaking words of blessing to all of the Sunday School kids.  And not just once.  This was no orderly circle-of-blessing like we end confirmation with; this was everyone blessing everyone over and over again.  Kids blessing kids; kids blessing me.  You are God’s beloved child.  You are God’s beloved child.  You are God’s beloved child.

A chaos of blessing.  What a gift.