This week I got a last minute invitation: a friend of our parish is building a new home for their family, and the house is finally framed and closed in. In a matter of days, the drywall will be hung. In that brief window, the friend sent out an SOS to friends of faith – come by and write a scripture verse, a blessing, a prayer, or a book quote on the studs before they are hidden away by drywall, tape, paint, and artwork.
In looking around the house, and all those words of blessing and care, I was thinking about how much a house hides. All those words of blessing will be hidden very soon. But eventually, those walls will also witness life’s sorrows and joys, life’s heartbreaks and cheers, life’s hardships and abundance. Someday, new generations will warm the home with their squeals and laughter. Renovations may be made, new paint may be applied, new pictures may be hung. All that life – from the blessings on the studs, to the skid marks left by forbidden scooters, to the sighs of contentment that linger in the air – all that life, seen and unseen, will create a beautiful breathing container of the abundance of blessing.
As I reflected on those studs, I wondered how often we get to think about our lives in the same way. We can’t really write blessings on the insides of our bodies, but our bodies carry the markers of a sacred life led too. The scar from playing in the old oak tree or from a life-improving surgery, the relationships that grew our heart’s capacity to love, the mentors who inspired our brains to interpret life differently, to the worship that got us out of our bodies enough to see blessing. It is quite easy to treat the body as a vessel to live life or for a home to be a place to sleep, eat, and be cleansed. But neither our bodies nor our homes are that simple. They hold the markers our whole lives.
I wonder how you might honor those vessels today. Maybe, as one of my fitness instructors says, you can thank your body for allowing you to function today. Maybe, you can pause on a stairwell and give thanks for the millions of times feet have tread on those stairs. Or maybe, you look at your body, or your home, and give thanks for signs of God’s presence, grace, and blessing.
