Friday, December 6, 2019
Genesis 8:6-12
6 At the end of forty days Noah opened the window of the ark that he had made 7and sent out the raven; and it went to and fro until the waters were dried up from the earth. 8Then he sent out the dove from him, to see if the waters had subsided from the face of the ground; 9but the dove found no place to set its foot, and it returned to him to the ark, for the waters were still on the face of the whole earth. So he put out his hand and took it and brought it into the ark with him. 10He waited another seven days, and again he sent out the dove from the ark; 11and the dove came back to him in the evening, and there in its beak was a freshly plucked olive leaf; so Noah knew that the waters had subsided from the earth. 12Then he waited another seven days, and sent out the dove; and it did not return to him any more.
Blessed
I first heard the Aaronic Blessing, Numbers 6:22-27, at the end of a Roman Catholic mass. I was deeply touched by it, and I wanted to mark it in my Bible so that I could return to it, but I didn’t have the book or verse numbers. A few weeks later, I was cooking dinner and had a TV on in the background, when I heard the passage again. Months later, I was still enchanted by this blessing. I asked priests and friends who knew the Bible, but I only had bits and pieces, and no one could help me. On New Year’s Day, I went to church at the Cathedral of the Holy Cross in Boston. They hold mass in English and Spanish, and I found my answer! The priest ended the mass with the blessing in English luckily enough, and, even though it was listed in the bulletin in Spanish, I understood the word “Numeros.”
I went home and looked up the verse and found the blessing in its entirety. As I paged through that Bible, which had belonged to my mother before she passed, I found a folded piece of paper. It was yellowed with age and looked like a page from a Reader’s Digest or maybe The Pilot. When I unfolded the paper, I was looking at the Aaronic Blessing! The answer was there all along. If we believe and have faith that God will provide for us, we will find the answers. They may not be available immediately, and they may not appear on our time line, but Jesus will provide us with what we need. Just wait.
Let us pray. God, you bless us in surprising and unexpected ways. Help us to wait for your blessing and open our eyes to see you at work in our lives. Amen.
Submitted by: Laurie Alley