Bless This House

We gather together each week for worship in God’s house. I always feel a sense of calm and peace just walking in the doors of the sanctuary and I would never want to miss out on coming to worship each weekend. In fact I feel fortunate that as a pastor I get to worship three times each weekend. And yet the experts say that the place where faith is really taught or rather caught, is in the home. For this reason we have for a year now included in the bulletin the “Taking Faith Home” inserts. Take these home! These inserts give a list of weekly scripture readings, a weekly prayer focus, and ideas for devotions and activities that can be done on your own, or as a family or couple. Use these ideas to take your faith home and let us know what results!

On another note of faith in the home, when families move to a new home they often ask us to come and lead a small House Blessing service. This is a really wonderful way to acknowledge the importance of this very thing—faith in our home. For the House Blessing service the individual, family or couple may invite friends or family or neighbors to gather in their home and then the group makes their way through the house. Someone carries a large candle and lights a smaller candle in each room as a reminder of Christ’s light shining in every part of our lives, every room of our house. As the group walks through each room, a prayer is offered asking God to bless the activity that takes place in that room. Moving to a new house or place of living often marks a transition in our lives and it is a wonderful thing to surround that transition with prayer. Also if our homes are the place our faith is taught and caught, if our homes are one of the primary places that our faith is lived out, then how wonderful to ask God’s presence to fill every corner of our lives and our homes.

May God visit with peace all that takes place in your home.
Pastor Shelly