Father, Son and Holy Spirit,
We bless you because you are our home.
From everlasting to everlasting, you are God.
Your faithfulness to us in Christ is a safe space of unending love, enduring delight, constant provision, and quiet rest.
And so we bless you for this house and the tangible expression it was of you being home for us.
We worship you for how you saw us here – you saw our joys, our tears, our play, our questions and confusions.
Here you witnessed death of dreams, heated arguments, sweet reconciliation, love made, salvation coming into the hearts of our kids.
Thank you for allowing us here to see you better, even through those moments of blindness where we were not sure you were there, you were teaching us to see what is more real than what is seen with these eyes.
We bless you also for what we did see with our physical eyes:
The view from the balcony to feast our senses
The flocks of sheep and goats that often came to graze in the hill below
The hills of Jerusalem far away in the distance
The wonder of snow on palm trees
We bless you for what we heard in this home:
Hesitant Arabic words and sentences, language victories and mistakes, read aloud books, Adventures in Odyssey, piano playing, and yes fights too – fights that remind us of our need of you, and the surety of your rescue.
We bless you for what we could taste here:
We tasted your provision, even on the winter of the turnip when turnip and parsnip and cauliflower seemed to be all we could eat, even then food never lacked.
We tasted love and welcome as friends gathered around our table, and with food on our laps in our living room.
We tasted your steadfastness in Tuesday taco nights and Friday pizza nights. We tasted abundance on sabbath days of feasting with our favorite desserts, of baking together and having others over to bake with us.
We bless you for the lavender, rosemary and mint we could smell here, for the scent of freshly baked bread. We bless you too for the not so great smells of broken toilets and broken pipes.
We bless you for how our feet ran races on our balcony, and rode scooters and bikes, for how we built forts and did somersaults in made up gymnastic spaces, for Wesley’s first steps.
We bless you for how your hands touched us here – healing raw wounds, soothing anxieties, calming our fears.
We bless you for hugs, playing with hair, fingers interlaced together as we held hands.
We bless you that as seasons came and went, this house was a sweet constant, a place to return to, where we felt safe, where we could cry, where we could rest.
We bless you for seasons of scarcity, where we lacked health, strength, and deep belonging. And how you taught us you are our spacious space, our triune community and dearest friend.
We know it was your unchanging presence that made it so.
And so Lord as we leave this dearly loved house, we entrust ourselves to you, our never changing home. May we know you better because of leaving it, may we worship your steadfastness and trust your constancy. May we rest knowing that in a new space you will show us the same grace and kindness.
We bless you Father, Son and Holy Spirit for all you are to us. As we transition, may we dwell with you in unbroken fellowship through Christ.
Amen
Aylín Merck 