A Blessing for Your Thursday: Softening Our Hard Hearts towards a Place of Compassion

When I close the broadcast of Morning Watch each day, I give a sort of benediction.  Some days it's more like words of encouragement.  Some days, it's more like prayer.  Some days, I repeat what I often say ("God is with us, cheering us on, walking beside us, going up ahead to clear a way for us, etc.).  Some days, something new breaks through.

I often wish later that I had written down what I said, because as the days go by and the recordings mount, it's hard to remember which days were the ones that felt profound.  There's only been a time or two where I turned the last words of Morning Watch into a post of any kind, but I know that there have been more times that felt more profound.

This morning was one of those days.  I talked about our hard hearts cracking open, and I heard that language which feels so violent, in these days of so much violence.

I said, "Let us pray that God who has said even the hardest heart can be melted, can be split open.  Let us pray in these days, that all of our hard heart places are cracked open just a little bit, or a lot.  Let us pray that the cracking open of these hardened hearts is not too painful a process, but instead a softening process."

I then went on to talk about hard hearts softening towards a place of compassion where we can all make better decisions.

Here was my final blessing:

"Move your hard heart places towards softening; see what you can approach from a spirit of compassion.  This the only way, or at least one of a few ways to make the world truly better.  That's what I wish for us all, a better world.  Let's begin to create it today!"