Season 3 - Episode 18

To listen to an audio version of this post, visit www.covenantchurch.ca/podcasts/covenant-weekly.

This morning, I share with you a blessing written by Kate Bowler. Kate is a professor at Duke Divinity School and an author of books including Everything Happens For a Reason (And Other Lies I've Loved) and No Cure for Being Human (And Other Truths I Need To Hear). Perhaps more significantly, Kate was declared cancer-free after years of being told that her stage IV cancer was incurable. This profound struggle has left Kate with a deep recognition of both the profound beauty and deep hardness of life which has shaped her and her work.

On her podcast Everything Happens, Kate has conversations with people from all walks of life. At the end of each episode, she offers a blessing she has written, usually related to the interview she has just conducted. The blessing below, "a blessing for when things don't make any sense," was recorded after an interview with renowned theologian, Stanley Haueraus. Dr. Bowler's interview with Dr. Haueraus is profoundly vulnerable and personal. You can listen to it at https://katebowler.com/podcasts/more-life-fewer-explanations-2/ and hear Kate read the following blessing herself.

God, I’m fumbling around for answers, reasons, meaning. 
I can’t find any purpose in this pain.
Why me?
Why them?
Why now?

I don’t know when this is going to get better. 
Or if I will ever feel relief.

Blessed are we who need to be reminded
that there are some things we can fix
…and some things we can’t. 

Blessed are we who can say:
my life isn’t always getting better. 

Right in the midst of the pain and fear and uncertainty,
may we hunt for beauty and meaning and truth… together. 

Not to erase the pain or solve the pain,
(though surely that would be nice), 
but to remind us that beauty and sorrow coexist. 
And that doesn’t mean we’re broken or have been forgotten.

In our hope. In our disappointment. In our joy. In our pain. 
God is here and we are never—were never and will be never—alone. 

-Dr. Kate Bowler (https://katebowler.com/blessings/a-blessing-for-when-things-dont-make-any-sense/)