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Blessed to Be a Blessing

I will make of you a great people. I will bless you and make your name so great that it will be used in blessings. I will bless those who bless you, and I will curse those who curse you. And all the people on the face of the earth will be blessed through you. ~ Genesis 12:2-3

Like all woodpeckers, Yellow-bellied Sapsuckers are blessed with unique tools and skills. They have stiff tail feathers that acts like a third foot to form a tripod while clinging to a tree trunk. They have a special cushioning at the base of their bills that creates a sort of shock-absorber that prevents them from concussing themselves when using their chisel-shaped bills to create holes in the tree. They have extra-long tongues that actually wrap up into the back of their skulls in order to retrieve food from inside the holes they create. In the case of sapsuckers, the purpose of that tongue and those holes is to, well, suck sap. Sapsuckers cleverly exploit the resources that trees offer by drilling a series of horizontal holes around a tree trunk, then leave. They later return to feast on the sap that flows from the holes and sometimes gobble up insects that are attracted to the sap and get stuck in it. No doubt, our human ancestors who figured out how to extract syrup from maples took note of how these birds did it.

Whether humans received this blessing from sapsuckers or not, there is one species that certainly has been blessed by the work of sapsuckers, and that would be hummingbirds. I was on a birding trip with some folks one time when we spied a sapsucker working a tree. One of the others on the trip mentioned that we should watch for a hummingbird, and sure enough, nearly immediately after the sapsucker left, a hummingbird arrived to sip from the well that the sapsucker had created.

If only humans could learn this lesson of abundance and sharing. Too often, we approach life with a scarcity mentality. Fear that there may not be enough to go around in the future leads to hoarding today. Often, we too are quick to see blessings as just for us and forget that in God’s economy, there is more than enough as long as we remember the core principle announced by God at the very birth of our faith. When God called Abraham, they explained why he was getting blessed: it was in order to be a blessing. The plan was to channel the abundance through a chosen people, who were then responsible to make sure everyone got their share.

Prayer: God of the sapsucker, God of the hummingbird, remind us of your abundance and our role in your economy. Bless us that we may be a blessing to all. Amen.

• Gina: prayers for Jeff B recovering from shoulder surgery and infection
• Nancy Sanford: Prayers for all those lost on 9/11, all those lost since 9/11 as a result of that day and all of their families.
• Nancy Sanford: Prayers for the hungry and the homeless.
   

Maine Conference UCC Budget Hearings

The 2022 midterm elections are on the horizon — are you planning to vote? Do you know how and where to vote, and what you might need to have when you show up to the polls? What if your voter registration is out of date, or has a mistake, and you are challenged at the polls — what can you do?

Maine Public is part of a new community-powered journalism project to answer those questions and any others you have about how to exercise your right to vote in the upcoming midterms. Our mission is to provide you with the information you need to vote — we’re not concerned about how you vote, or who you vote for, we just want to make sure you are armed with the information you need to vote and understand how elections are run and kept secure.

This project is part of the work of America Amplified, an initiative funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to support community engagement journalism in public media. We’re also working with 28 other public media stations across the country to ensure that all eligible American citizens can vote.

Many states, including Maine, have changed voting regulations since the 2020 general election, when concerns about the pandemic led to an expansion of absentee and mail-in voting. This time around, the rules are different, and there’s a ton of misinformation and disinformation circulating about elections and election security — we’re here to clear things up.

Are these elections important? Arguably, every election is important. But this one could likely change the balance of power in our state and our country. You can’t sit this one out if you care about what’s going on.

“We do not have a government by the majority. We have a government by the majority who participate.” That truism is often — wrongly — attributed to Thomas Jefferson. But regardless of attribution, it remains true that you can’t change anything unless you choose to participate in the process. We’re asking you to participate here: submit any and all questions about taking part in the upcoming midterms by clicking on the button on the prompt.

You can also text your questions to us! Just text MAINE to 855-670-1777 and follow the prompts to submit a question about participating in the midterm elections.

With help from our partners at America Amplified, we’ll answer the questions online, on the air and on social media. We’ll send the answers directly to you as well. If you share your contact information, we may even reach out personally.

We can’t do this without you.