The New Year
“For last year’s words belong to last year’s language
And next year’s words await another voice. ”
The idea that a year ends ‘here’ and a new one begins ‘there’ seems so arbitrary. We all know there is no real difference between December 31st and January 1st, and that after the initial shock of writing ‘2022’ wares off, we’ll be left with Mondays and 3 pms and frustration and comfort just like we’ve always had. But I love it, I love that in the passing of a second - 2021 and all that it contained becomes no more than a story of things that happened last year, and last year will soon become years ago and then the past and then a memory - ungraspable, almost unreal.
Because I believe that this way of categorising time is the very grace of God.
The God who uses light and dark to separate day and night,
The God who creates a working week and a sabbath rest,
The God who brings seasons - some of abundance, some of melancholy,
The God who causes the earth to spin and the planets to revolve.
Is the God who gives us the newness of each day and of each year, as a gift!
A way to begin again, a way to refresh and to learn that his mercies are new each morning, each week, each month, each year, forever!
(Lamentations 3:22-23)
I love that the preceding day, or week or month or year, is tied up and put behind.
And whilst we are left to eat the fruit of what has gone before, it has gone, it is before, and our present moment is new.
A new moment is open to new movement, and new movement, new language.
it’s not magic, it’s grace!
So upon the edge of this ‘bright future’, which will (if we’re honest) look a lot like the dim past, the question is:
How will you enter?
How will you end and how will you begin?
Here is something you could try.
In the coming and goings of today, find a silent spot.
Let your mind reel back through the year – where were you last year?
What was on your heart then?
What were you afraid of?
What were you excited by?
What were you frustrated at?
What were you thankful for then?
Then play through the year with all its wins and losses, it bright sparks, its dusty valleys.
Don’t judge the year or how you moved through it. Just offer it to God.
Thank God for his presence, his movement with you and his turning of all things to good.
Thank him that the past year has some part to play in his narrative, and that all toil was not fruitless, that all pain was not meaningless and that any broken heart or crushed spirit that has not already been will one day be healed.
"My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness"
(2 Corinthians 12:9)
And as you sift through your memories and memories of memories if you find that there is a word, a turn of phrase or an idea that grips you, that appears clearer than all the rest. Grab hold of it!
Write it down! Store it. It is yours to keep. A lasting remembrance.
Then as you slowly meander through to where you are now.
Question your heart.
Where are you thankful?
Where are you afraid?
Where are you angry?
Where are you at peace?
Where are you frustrated?
Where are you joyful?
Where are you with Jesus?
And then think of what word or phrase or idea you want to lead you into next year.
Then pray that God in his grace would Keep you and grow you and teach you and change you.
Transforming you by his love.
My phrase for 2022
Take no thought of the harvest,
But only of proper sowing. – T.S Elliot
Or - put in other words - 1 Corinthians 3:6-9
And my prayer for you as you end and begin again, which you may pray also for me is that:
“you may enjoy good health and that all may go well with you, as it goes well with your soul” (3 John 1:2)
Happy new year!
Love Jonnie
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