As we begin our 2022 Prayer Week, we want to refocus on what new things lie ahead. As we hopefully return to some semblance of normal (viz., returning to the classroom and workplace, and re-engaging relationships with neighbours and friends), we want to pray for new vision and increasing passion for entering these spaces as image-bearers of Jesus. Our prayer theme this week is BLESS! 

The words “bless” and “blessed” are all over the Bible, showing up 427 times in the NIV. Blessing normally involves a verbal proclamation over someone that expresses a desire that God would intervene for their ultimate well-being. But blessing must also, when possible, involve actions that help bring about that well-being. Normally God blesses people, or priests and leaders bless people—but we begin our prayer week with the unusual biblical command to “Bless the LORD.” In this context, the word bless seems to mean “worship,” “praise,” or “extol.” 

We begin our prayer week with worship prayers to the one who gives us physical and spiritual life, salvation, community, meaning and purpose! We bless the Source of Life—the Bread of Life—the Living Water! We verbally speak and sing this blessing upward in the direction of Jesus. We bless the LORD as we sit, stand, kneel, and walk. We bless the LORD in our hearts and homes—and we bless the LORD as we gather together with other disciples of Jesus. We bless the LORD in sorrow and in joy; in suffering and in celebration; in the rain and in the sunshine; in solitude and while surrounded by the joyous community. 

To bless the LORD means we verbally express worship both on our own and also corporately (e.g., “I will declare [God’s] name to my people; in the assembly, I will praise you” [Ps 22:22]). To bless the LORD also means that we pursue actions that participate in God’s Kingdom mission in the world. To bless is both to speak and to act. So on day one our prayers are declarations of worship: “Bless the LORD, O my soul!”

Stressful events can bring people together, but they can just as easily turn neighbours, friends, and family into “enemies.” We’ve seen this happen in the past pandemic years. Countries that have long been friends suddenly close their borders. Churches, families, and friendship groups unified around Jesus and his kingdom mission, now divided over masks, vaccines, and mandates. People have become separated along political and ideological lines.

It is easy to “curse” our enemies—but Jesus tells us to bless. Paul says, “bless and do not curse.” Peter says, “Repay evil with blessing” (1 Peter 3:9). While it is next to impossible to avoid having enemies altogether, we want to be people who bless our enemies and “pray for those who mistreat [us].” 

Remember, the blessing involves speaking gracious words proclaiming our desire that God would act for the other people’s ultimate well-being. It also includes doing actions to help make these words of blessing a reality—as much as this is humanly possible. So, if we want to bless our enemies, we need to speak words that reflect our honest desire for their ultimate well-being. We need to pursue actions that demonstrate our desire to bless rather than curse. 

There may be no more difficult prayers than this—to pray blessings over our enemies. But this is the way of Jesus and a much-needed path as we move into 2022. So on day three, our prayers are for the blessing of our enemies.

A significant part of being an Old Testament priest was to bless the Israelites. Numbers 6:24-26 became the blessing pattern that continues to the present. Since the New Testament defines the church family today as a “royal priesthood” (1 Peter 2:9), each of us carries the same responsibility to bless. Numbers 6:27 implies that somehow in the process of pronouncing a blessing over the people, God will “put [his] name on the Israelites” and “bless them.” Blessing is not just empty human words but something that has a spiritual and physical impact on the people of God. 

The blessing in Numbers 6 proclaims a desire that God will:

• “keep you”—which is another way of saying “protect,” “guard,” and “preserve.”
• “make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you,”—which means that God’s saving presence will be near you. 
• “turn his face toward you and give you peace [Shalom]”—which means that God will give you his focus and attention for the purpose of ultimate wholeness and well-being.

The Numbers 6 blessing is all about God protecting the people of God, about God’s presence dwelling among the people; and about God’s provision of ultimate wholeness and well-being. Our blessing over the Church must involve these same things—protection, divine presence, and divine provision. But in this blessing, we hope that God will “put his name on” us so that we can reflect his character, love, and mission in 2022 more than ever before. So day four involves prayers for the blessing of the Church.

As followers of Jesus, we want to nurture deep and loving relationships so that we walk through life not in isolation but in joyful community. Whether married or single, all of us need “families” of people who are in our closest network of relationships. Our prayers on this day are for a blessing over these people whom we consider “family,” whether or not they are biologically connected to us. 

We have a responsibility to bless our families. We are responsible for ensuring that we do no harm, abuse, or neglect to our families. Sometimes, it may even be easier to bless the LORD, bless our neighbours and enemies, and even bless the Church than to bless those we consider family. However, no relationship will experience more harm more quickly through the neglect of blessing than our family relationships. May 2022 be a year of blessing our families! 

Blessing is a much-needed part of being family. The righteous bless their parents while the unrighteous “curse” and/or refuse to bless their parents (cf. Pr 30:11). We read in the biblical story of parents like Laban and Jacob blessing their children. After bringing the Ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem, David went home “to bless his household” (2 Sam 6:20). Jesus blesses the little children (Mark 10:16) and then blesses the disciples (Luke 24:50-51). Jesus, though single, is creating a family—and blessing that family. We want to be people of blessing who pronounce blessings over our biological families and over those in family-like relationships with us. 

Our blessing pattern continues to be Numbers 6:24-26, where we declare a desire that God will:

• “protect,” “guard,” and “preserve” those in our family.
• be a gracious and redemptive presence and that our family will become faithful disciples of Jesus.
• give his focus and attention so that our family can experience ultimate wholeness and well-being.

Blessing our family involves a desire and a responsibility to protect and guard those in our family. Blessing our family also involves encouragement to respond to God’s gracious invitation for relationship, salvation, and discipleship. Finally, blessing our family means we desire God’s ultimate wholeness and well-being for our family. We participate in making that a reality (as much as we can). So on day five, we pray prayers of blessing over our family.

We begin today with the foundational statement: “God so loved the world…” (John 3:16). Because God so loved the world, God wants “all peoples on earth” to be blessed. This blessing fulfills God’s Kingdom vision as described in Revelation 7:9 where a “great multitude” of the redeemed come from every nation, tribe, people, and language and worship Jesus before the throne. Our prayer today is for the nations.

Once again, we want to follow the Numbers 6:24-26 model. A faithful blessing means that we desire that:

• God would guard and protect those in our world;
• God’s redemptive presence would be proclaimed and become a reality for those in our world;
• God would bring his ultimate wholeness and well-being to our world.

Our blessing for the nations is for God’s protection as people around the world experience suffering: suffering resulting from the pandemic, suffering from violence, war, or political unrest, suffering from natural disasters, and suffering as a result of famine and economic disaster.

Our blessing for the nations is also that God’s redemptive presence would be demonstrated and proclaimed around the world so that people from every nation would become redeemed worshipers of Jesus as described in Revelation 7:9. 

Finally, our blessing for the nations is that God’s peace or Shalom would spread across our earth—as we await the day when Jesus returns, and his kingdom comes to earth as it is in heaven. So on day six, our prayers are for God’s blessing over the nations.

While it would be tempting to label this final day “Bless the Creation!” the biblical record does not contain examples of people blessing inanimate objects. Jewish prayers almost always begin with the words: “Blessed are you, O Lord, King of the Universe.” While the Rabbi in Fiddler on the Roof suggests a blessing for the new sewing machine, the biblical pattern is to bless the Creator rather than the creation. While we often ask people at mealtime to “bless the food,” the biblical pattern is to bless the ultimate giver of the food rather than the food itself. (Although many Bible translations of Matthew 26:26 imply that Jesus blessed “it” [the bread], the Greek only says that Jesus “blessed”—which in the Jewish tradition of his childhood would have meant that he almost certainly blessed God rather than the bread itself.)

We have come to the end of our week of prayer, once again, directing our attention to God—the one who is “worthy…to receive glory and honour and power” because he has “created all things.” We should bless the Triune Creator God for his physical creation, which sustains us, mystifies us, enthralls us, and gives us meaningful work. We should bless God for the beauty he paints across the evening sky, into each snow flake, across the rock cliff faces; and into every unusual and amazing creature of sky, sea, and land. But we also should bless God even when the physical creation terrifies us with its immense and destructive power manifest in floods, fires, storms, earthquakes, and volcanoes. 

Blessing the Creator God starts with going outside and truly opening our eyes. As Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s poem says: “Earth’s crammed with heaven, And every common bush afire with God; But only he who sees, takes off his shoes.” We need to walk slowly and notice the intricate beauty and immense power of God’s Creation. We need to turn away from our screens and look! We need to take out our earbuds and noise-cancelling headphones and listen! And with each new sight or sound, we need to verbalize a prayer of blessing to our Creator God! And after verbalizing these prayers, we must ask Jesus how we could act in ways that honour and preserve God’s good creation. So, we come to the end of our 2022 Prayer Week, praying prayers of blessing toward our Creator God.