Blessing Backpacks, Blessing Us All

Based on what I'm reading in various Facebook updates, the Blessing of the Backpacks as part of August church services is becoming fairly common across the nation, or at least in the Southeast. I'm all in favor.

Trinity Lutheran Church has expanded its Blessing of the Backpacks approach. We bless backpacks and the children that will take them to school. We collect school supplies for those that don't have them. We bless teachers. In a move that's dear to my heart, we bless administrators and cafeteria workers and bus drivers and librarians--all the support staff that make learning possible. We bless students from pre-K to college age, which includes grad school.

Lately, I've come to believe that as a people of faith, we need to spend more time on blessing and laying on of hands. And as I remember my own school years, I remember it as being fraught with dangers of all sorts. Yes, by all means, let us bless our students and their backpacks. Let us bless the adults who are charged with so much responsibility.

I would love to see us bless a wide variety of workers. It's a great way of reminding us all that our ministry can come in many forms. Most of us won't be pastors, hospice chaplains, or people who are employed by a church. But most of us have a mission field. When we think about our coworkers, we may be the way that God ministers to them.

And it's not just our coworkers. Our mission field may be our neighbors or others in our community. In an ideal world, weekly worship blesses us and equips us to be the hands of God, reaching out to a world in desperate need of healing.