Daily Devotion for 23rd April 2025

Then he led them out as far as Bethany, and, lifting up his hands, he blessed them. While he was blessing them, he withdrew from them and was carried up into heaven. And they worshipped him, and returned to Jerusalem with great joy;  and they were continually in the temple blessing God.

Reflection

At the end of Luke’s Gospel, just like at the end of a good worship service, there is a blessing. Luke even helps us to imagine Jesus ‘lifting up his hands’ as he blesses them. The ‘them’ is more than the twelve, but a whole company assembled. And they are blessed, so blessed that even though Jesus has parted from them they are full of that first order Christian characteristic – ‘joy’.

I wonder whether we have lost a sense of how precious, joyous and life-giving a blessing can be. Rather often the subject of blessing emerges as only a second best to something else. ‘I couldn’t receive Communion, but I was offered a blessing.’ ‘They can’t be married, but they could be blessed.’ Don’t we distort and devalue blessing if we make it just a consolation prize? 

I have often been to the altar in churches where, until the Christian community receives fully the gift of unity, I cannot receive the bread and wine. And there I have received a blessing, often with a gentle touch on my head and a prayer especially offered for me, expressed with a generosity and grace I can’t say I deserve, but for which I am grateful and deeply moved. I have sometimes felt that, at such moments, I received a gift as profound as any from the hands and voices of God’s faithful servants. To be blessed is to know grace. To be blessed is to have the image of God in me recognised for what it is and to have the humanity in me become more fully divine. To be blessed is … to be blessed. 

When a meeting or a service ends I crave a strong ending. I long for a blessing. And then I know I can return to my life full of joy. 

Prayer

The blessing of God,
who created you in love,
who walks this life beside you,
and who inspires your every breath,
be with you
and give you joy,
now and always, 
Amen.