This is a book tailor-made for people seeking a daily spiritual practice. To glance at the table of contents is to see how one might put this book to practical use.
100 blessings, each two pages in length, are organized within ten categories. Here is a sampling from all of those categories. A blessing …
- For feeling like your work matters.
- For when you can’t sleep.
- For a little boost in the morning.
- For when disaster strikes.
- For this overwhelming day.
- For when you’ve been hurt by the church.
- For when you are afraid.
- For the givers who need to receive.
- For learning to delight again.
- For Christmas Eve.
The authors are both of Protestant Christian background, with connections to Duke Divinity School. That said, it is interesting that they focus on blessings, rather than prayers, which is to use language that’s more traditionally Jewish than it is Christian. Still, the language of these blessing-prayers — as well as the design elements in the book (a repeating cross symbol) — have a distinctively Christian feel.
Sometimes quotations from well-known authors (such as Frederick Buechner, Dr. Martin Luther King, and Diane Ackerman) appear at the start of a blessing. For example, on the two-page spread for a blessing called “For waking up to life again,” a quotation by Diane Ackerman focuses the person using the blessing on the practice of Wonder: “Wonder is the heaviest element on the periodic table. Even a tiny fleck of it stops time.”
Spiritual practices of faith, grace, and gratitude are also abundantly present here.
Often there is a scripture verse from either the Old or New Testament attached to a blessing.
