Before I got married I asked my father to give me his blessing. I had already asked my future father-in-law’s permission, and he had given it along with a lot of love and support. But for some reason, I needed my father to bless me.

I’m not sure where it came from, what part deep inside of me needed to be blessed. But my dad obliged, and resting his hands on my head prayed for me, that I’d be a good husband and father and always stay close to God.

How often people come to us and need the blessing of our time. Especially our children, whose little hearts often depend on the love they see in our eyes. How often we fail to give them this blessing, how often we feel the sadness and anger left in its absence.

Lately, blessings have been arriving in small packages, whereas all the big things in life tend to be rather terrible. I wonder if that is indicative of who God is, how God likes to come to us most intimately in smallness and humility.

Blessings often appear small because they in themselves are an invitation to be small ourselves. The grandiose is not always God, it’s often the ego trying to project itself as larger than it’s weaknesses, which it tries to cover up.

But little blessings let us shed that fear, let us draw close, let us be tender and sweet and totally open.

Sometimes the world seems dark and cruel, but blessings continue to abound, breaking through the cracks in the darkness, shedding light into the sadness of the world.

A bird sings at sunset, Christmas lights in the snow, a child’s smile, the gentle embrace of two friends, a mother draws close to her baby, a father and son play chase, giggling all the way.

None of it makes headlines and it is all around us and it is the only reason any of us will be saved. Can you see it? At this moment? It only wants to be felt and received in your heart.

The love that moves the suns and stars, the rhythm of God in every heart, in the breathing in and out, in the sweet surrender of sleep, in all that will not be annihilated at death but completely and totally fulfilled.

Little blessings from an infinite God.

Can you see them?