Did you know that your birth is not an accident?
Before you were born, the Lord chose the soil of your birth, the space which would hear your first cry. He knows all the lands on which your growing feet will leave footprints until the day your weary earthly body returns into the dust.
I bless your feet for the journeys the Lord takes you on and the lands in which you find yourself. I bless you with the knowledge that God hems you in behind and before and with the knowledge that, though you may feel like an alien and a stranger, your real home, your real citizenship is in heaven. I bless you with fellow journeyman, companions to travel alongside you as you wander, and to remind you of both the joy and the temporariness of the places you find yourself in. May you sow healing and blessing wherever your feet walk.
Did you know that your blood is not an accident?
In you, God wove together two distinct bloodlines into one. Two peoples, two histories, two lineages, reaching incomprehensibly like tree roots into the past and now expertly woven together into the beautiful tapestry that is you. Your ancestors have made tragic mistakes and achieved great victories. Neither bloodline is superior to the other nor has achieved full perfection. Both make you who you are. God made your ancestors with the same care that He made you and He redeemed them with the same blood as was used to buy you out of slavery and into His glorious freedom.
I bless your blood with both acceptance and humility. I bless you with forgiveness for the mistakes your peoples have made, the sins they have committed, and the lies they have believed. I bless you with eyes that see more clearly how to live rightly in this generation. I bless you with the knowledge that your people are precious in His sight and have a unique purpose to make in His kingdom. And I bless you with the humility to know that your people are not the only people who are precious in His sight with a purpose in His Kingdom. I bless you and your children and your children’s children with hearts that long to see every tribe and tongue and nation worshiping the One True King.
Did you know that the day of your birth is not an accident?
The day, the time, the era you were born in was determined long before the day arrived. You have been chosen to perform good works in the expanse of time you walk this earth, works created in advance for you to do by the One who made you. On this day, stand firm and fight the battles God ordains for you so that your children may arise and call you blessed because their lives are better for your efforts.
People may look upon you and curse you for the lands which taint your feet or the blood that colors your veins or the stories that are spoken of your people. I bless you with the ability to forgive those who curse you because of you know who has called you His. May He speak the truth of who you are into the wounded caverns of your identity. Likewise, you must beg forgiveness for those you have similarly cursed and wounded.
But these gifts are for His glory and not for yours. He has given you crowns for you to lay at His feet, not to lord over others or to deny them their crowns.
I bless you with lips that praise our King in your mother tongue and in the music of your heart language. I bless you with the freedom to walk and to eat and to dance and to rejoice and to mourn in the custom of your people. I bless you with the ability to reflect the image of God in the way only you can, that only your people can.
I bless you with love and honor for the families of the earth that are different from your own. I bless you with a heart that lays down your life for your neighbor, as the Good Samaritan did for the wounded Jew.
I bless you to be a bridge-builder, a force for peace, and an ambassador of Heaven in the corners of the earth in which you dwell. May you be used to tear down the wall of hostility between peoples and bring reconciliation to those far from God and at war with each other. May you find your place of belonging in His family even others reject you.
My precious, precious children, you are His. Root yourself in that truth and let it bleed out into every aspect of your identity so He can then redeem all the other complex and beautiful pieces that make you so fearfully and wonderfully made.
May you join in the mission of God to bring healing to the nations, in every land, throughout all bloodlines, and throughout every era humans inhabit. May you join in with every nation, tribe, people and language in declaring that "salvation belongs to our God, who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb" (Revelation 7:9-10).
Amina.
