Mizpah

I love the Jewish tradition of summing up a theme of a passage with one word and often an accompanying symbol. One of these is in the reading this week, Genesis 31:49, “The Lord watch between me and thee, when we are absent one from another". There is a good sermon regarding this by Laurie DeMott, God Watch Between Me and Thee. Here is an excerpt,

Benedictions often function, then, as more than simple prayers of blessing: they can capture the character of a congregation or its minister, summarize a worship, or convey a specific understanding about our relationship to God.

When Laban uttered his words of “Benediction” to Jacob, he chose words that he believed would create a certain type of bond between Jacob, himself, and God. The words Laban chose were powerful, words that most of us hear in the King James Version – “The Lord watch between me and thee, when we are absent one from another,” – and those words touch that deep part of the human heart that always feels a certain anxiety when we are parted from loved ones. “If I can’t be with you to watch over you,” we want to say, “then let me take comfort in knowing that God is watching over you.” Laban’s words became known in Judaism as the Mizpah blessing and have been likewise adopted by generations of Christians often as benedictions in their own worship services.. Lyndon Johnson’s mother often wrote the single word, “Mizpah”, on the back of her letters to her son as a shorthand way of letting him know she was keeping him in her prayers.