First Presbyterian Church of Arlington 663 Kearny Avenue Kearny NJ 07032-2935

As I write these words, I’m feeling blessed . . . not by the weather (today is one of those rare perfect 10 summer days), but by a message I heard last Sunday on "The Architecture of Blessing" when I visited Memorial West Presbyterian Church in Newark. (In case you are wondering, it’s one of the congregations where I moderate the session.) The Rev. Toby Sanders, the preacher, had an interesting background, having been raised in the Church Of God In Christ and now an ordained United Church of Christ minister and Ph.D. candidate at Princeton Theological Seminary. We don’t get to hear many Reformed sermons preached in the Pentecostal style!

So why is that a blessing? Well, I’d like to share some of what I re-learned about blessings:

First, all blessings come from God and are given to God’s people. But we often confuse other things with blessings. This means this gorgeous day is not a blessing. This means that all the wonderful gifts I have received from God -- like a comfortable home and plenty of good food to eat and interesting work to do and enough money -- are not blessings. As Jesus said in his Sermon on the Mount, God "makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous."

And sometimes we confuse blessings with what Madison Avenue tells us we ought to buy -- which more often than not doesn’t match up with what God wants for us.

Blessings from God change us, they transform our lives. God touches our lives and we turn to God; we receive the precious gift of God’s amazing grace; we are healed; the blessing begins.

Blessings from God don’t stop with us, however -- they grow. They grow when we begin to speak to others, like I’m doing now by sharing what I heard with you. A really good place to begin to speak is in the church -- our community of faith, among sisters and brothers who have also been blessed. We can encourage each other.

Blessings don’t stop in the church either. When we leave here, strengthened through Word and sacrament and prayer, strengthened because we have met God, we go as people who have been nourished and cared for -- and, well, blessed.

And because we have been blessed, healed, transformed, because we go out as the people of God, the eyes and feet and hands -- the body of Christ -- we become blessings when we touch other people’s lives and the blessings just keep on coming!

Does that seem too mysterious to understand and too wonderful to be true? That’s the final thought -- the only way to find out, to really know, is to live it.

With prayers that these thoughts will be a blessing to you as on your journey with Jesus,

Rev. Phyllis Zoon, Moderator of Session

"Christ has no body now on earth but yours, no feet but yours, no hands but yours. Yours are the eyes through which the compassion of Christ is to look out on a hurting world. Yours are the feet with which he is to go about doing good. Yours are the hands with which he is to bless all now."

Teresa of Avila, 1515-1582