When our home congregations - who nurtured us and shaped us, who celebrated with us and wept with us - close permanently, it can feel a bit like a perpetual Good Friday. Maybe your church closed recently, and you aren't sure if there's a place for you on this Resurrection Sunday. Maybe the church of your youth has closed, so you can never really go home. Maybe you've felt a bit lost, and even distant from God.

This blessing is for you.

And, we all know what it's like to experience loss and to wander and to grieve -- so this blessing is for all of us.

You are not alone.

[Transcript below video]

A Good Friday blessing for you… 

You who are lost, who find yourselves in the unfamiliar lands that loss forms in our lives. You are the ones who know intimately what it is to be unsettled, to grieve, to wait.

You who ache for the past: for the sights and sounds and smells of a community long gone 

You who wonder if resurrection will ever come. 

Remember that there is no place you can be that isn’t already holy, no distance you cross without the Divine meeting you.

Remember the people who have shaped you, who gave you an inheritance not of buildings and stone but of faith and love. 

Remember that this day - this very day - is sacred, just as it is. 

May you know that grief is offering enough, and that there are others who wander this land, too.

May you find each other. May you weep together.

May you be a living letter to the next generation — from all the saints who have come before. 

May you see glimpses of newness and of grace, even in unexpected places. 

Beloved, this day is for you. 

However you find yourself on this day, may you remember that you are a part of this story.

The beautiful and the broken, and that which is not yet finished.

This day is holy. You are holy.

Take courage, dear ones, and place your trust in the story that does not end on this day, but waits in stillness for resurrection.