Ready or Not, Here We Go!
Into the New Year I am plunging, realizing I am about as ready for it as I would be a dip in the Chesapeake Bay. Nevertheless, off we go . . . into the year.
That I don’t mention the news of the year so far doesn’t mean its tentacles aren’t crushing my heart – it’s always the background noise in my head. But there never was an easier, gentler time, has there?
Recently I read a poem that expressed the tension I feel as I see our kids and their kids inheriting the world we – the Boomers — are bequeathing them. Click on the link, and see what you think of Maggie Smith’s words: Good Bones.
Another poem, a meditation written by a friend, also challenges, but comforts. Yes, we are standing in a mess, much of our own making; much more beyond our control. But not beyond the Lord’s.
Hope for the Hard ~a meditation by Joy Gordon Beans
For the hard, there is HOPE.
I saw through broken into light
My spirit crushed in dead of night.
“My sorrowed child,” He said to me, “just look and tell me what you see.”
I see a world unlike my own
I see a feast
I see a crown
I see a place filled with delight
Whose very essence is the Light
A place where all are in the know
Where grace and mercy overflow
But here I sit in sad despair
With shards of broken everywhere.
When will this lightness come to pass?
How long, oh Lord, will broken last?
“I’m near,” He said, “so do not fret.
It is already and not yet.”
My journal is bright red this year – and it has been embossed with a treasured verse, Isaiah 33:6: He shall be the stability of your times . . . May His peace guard our hearts, no matter what we see in the days ahead.
Into the New Year, Ready or Not
Being powerless doesn’t mean I am helpless, even in an autumn’s garden!
Resolutions: Instead of making a list of negative resolutions . . . why not begin the New Year by resolving to follow three lowly practices:
Learn one simple skill of our God-given hands . . .
Give instant obedience to some simple domestic need, . . . without complaint.
Recite the Lord’s Prayer slowly, pausing . . . and thinking one simple thought about each one.
Even in the most commonplace doings and experiences, it is possible for a man to “ put on Christ.” Edward Leen
(From January 2 from A Book of Days for Christians by Richardson Wright)