Guerilla Blessing

How would you like to be a secret agent for God, involved in a clandestine operation to fill the world with his blessing?  Here’s your opportunity to begin sending the Lord’s grace into people’s lives without them ever knowing about it.  It’s easier than you may think, but it sends more of the Lord’s power than we can understand into the lives of people who need it more than they realize.

During my recent sabbatical, I was introduced to the practice of “Guerilla Blessing.”  All that it requires is a belief in the power of prayer, and the ability to care about other people.  Imagine that you find yourself among a group of strangers: other shoppers in the store, other drivers in traffic, other fans at a sporting event.  Randomly choose someone to look at, preferably without them even knowing it.  As you do, silently pray, “May you know joy.  May you know peace.”  Then shift your gaze to another person.  “May you know joy.  May you know peace.”  And then another.  And another.  “May you know joy.  May you know peace.”

As you spend those few seconds holding someone before the Lord, something will happen within you.  Suddenly that stranger will become a real person to you.  They are no longer “that white truck in front of me,” but a man whom you can imagine is tired after a long day’s work.  You may begin to wonder what kind of job he has and what sort of family he is going home to.  She is no longer that person with a shopping cart full of groceries in front of you in the check-out line, but somebody’s mother or daughter or sister or wife.  Is her heart full of happiness, or is she going through the drudgery of a monotonous routine?  Has she just had an argument with a friend, or will she get unexpected good news the next time she checks her email?

Your prayers of blessing, “May you know joy.  May you know peace” are effective, because they do not depend upon that person accepting them, or even knowing about them.  They make a difference because their potency depends not upon their awareness, or upon your knowledge of that person.  They depend upon the grace of the Father, who sent his redemption into the world through the death and resurrection of his Son.  He sent his redemption to us when we were not only unaware of it, but actively resisting his love.  Your “guerilla blessings” are a way for that redeeming grace to touch another person in a new way.

I learned about “guerilla blessings” while I spent a week in Chicago with a community of Roman Catholic sisters who spend their days praying for a city, nation, and world in need of God’s mercy and grace.  Each Friday they pray for a safe weekend in Chicago, painfully aware of the gun violence that takes so many lives.  On Monday they grieve when they hear the number of shootings have taken place.  But I am convinced that without their own form of “guerilla blessing,” that number would be so much greater.

Unseen Footprints

“Your path led through the sea,

     your way through the mighty waters,

     though your footprints were not seen.” (Psalm 77:19)

One of the things I enjoy about live theater, perhaps more than the actors themselves, is the stagecraft.  (Maybe it’s because I was on stage crew in high school.)  People work behind the scenes to pull off audience-pleasing effects.  They dart out, dressed all in black, when the lights are darkened between scenes, to reset the stage.  A good theatrical crew member is invisible, never seen or noticed by the people in the seats.

Similarly, movie production crews don’t want you to be able to tell the difference between live action and computer-generated images (or CGIs).  If the dragon seems as real as the Hollywood superstar riding on its back, the animators have accomplished their goal.  They don’t want people to realize that they’ve done anything at all.

Just like God.

The author of Psalm 77 describes his distress about feeling separated from the Lord.  He remembers his “songs in the night” and joy that God had brought into his life.  But now that joy is gone.  Had God forgotten him?  Had the Lord rejected and abandoned him in anger?  Eventually he finds consolation by remembering “the deeds of the Lord,” and his miracles from long ago.  Recalling God’s faithful actions in the past gives him the confidence in God’s continuing care and guidance that he needs to persevere.  Even though he can not feel the Lord’s power in his life, he knows that it is real.

Psalm 77 offers an encouraging perspective for those times when God seems absent.  When the psalmist considers God’s powerful actions in the past, he remembers how he parted the Red Sea to lead the Israelites out of captivity in Egypt.  As the 19^th verse puts it, God’s path led through the sea, even though his “footprints were not seen.”

As I read this verse, I recognize how God is invisibly at work during the times when he feels distant from me, and when his love seems as remote as a favorite song from long ago.  God has not rejected me or abandoned me.  He is not too busy keeping the universe spinning to remember little puny insignificant me.  I am never puny or insignificant or forgotten in the eyes of God.  And neither are you.  He is working mighty deeds and powerful actions all around us, all the time.  His blessings are present every moment of every day, and he pours his love upon us like the waters of Niagara Falls.  God does great things, but his footprints are not always seen.

You may not see God’s footprints in your life.  But he is acting in power to show his love and to change your life.