Happy 2015 everyone! My hope and prayer is that this new year will bring you an abundance of blessings, an abundance of joy, an abundance of happiness, and an abundance of love. Whatever 2014 may have been for you, I hope that 2015 is better in every way.
One of the best things about a new year is the new calendar that often accompanies the new year. You first open your 2015 calendar, and what you see are empty pages, waiting to be filled in with events and activities, all the things that go into making our daily lives what they are.
The new calendar, for the new year, is an invitation to plan, yes, but also to dream and vision. The whole of the year is laid out before you – how will you fill it up? What will you do with the new year? Who will you be with? Where will you go? What adventures await you? What struggles might lie ahead of you? It’s all future, as you look at that new calendar, and the filling in of that future is entirely up to you.
What a gift! What an opportunity! How will you live in this new year? What will your life look like? How will you grow and change? How will you be blessed? How will you be a blessing? How will you help others grow and change?
Oh sure, there are things we always have to do, and many of our days are really filled before we ever see the new calendar, but there is so much that is still left open to us, so much that is still left open for us, as well. The joy of a new year, for me, comes in the not knowing, in the wondering of what lies ahead for me, for my family, for my church.
As I look at my new calendar, with all of it various things – plans already made, plans yet to be made, unknown adventures to be lived – there is always one constant that makes all the plans and uncertainties together completely doable, and that is the knowledge that, whatever the new year brings, God is with me as it happens.
The promise of the new year, the openness of the new year, is always tempered by the continuing presence of God in my life. This is the one absolute certainty we have going into 2015 – God is with us. Always and everywhere, God is there with us. Whatever we end up doing in 2015, we do it knowing that God is with us as we do it. Good or bad, happy or sad, God is with us. Whatever the new year brings, God is with us.
So, knowing this, knowing the constant and abiding presence of God in all the moments of our lives, again, I wish you a very happy and blessed 2015. Enjoy the new year, embrace the new year, explore the new year, knowing always that God is with you, in 2015 and in all the years to come. See you in church!
Peace,
Pr. Paul