May the God of hope and faith, be with us in this
coming year.
May you take the time today to look back over your
year and honor those days and the person you were in them. As
I said last year, everything sad won’t come untrue in 2022 and this year will
hold its own tragedies and sorrows. We’ll relearn lament and fight for joy.
May we say good-bye to the things that do not serve
us - the selfishness, the fear, the illusions of control, the
bitterness, the doom-scrolling, the self-pity, the martyr complex, the
us-and-them fire stokers - and say hello to wisdom, to kindness, to justice, curiosity,
wonder, goodness, generosity, possibility, peacemaking.
May we throw open the doors of our lives to the
disruptive, wild, healing Holy Spirit. May this be a year of unclenched hands
and new songs, of good food and some laughter, of kind endings and new
beginnings. May we be given a mustard seed of faith, it will be enough to
notice and name what you love in particular about your life as it stands.
We may not see an end to the pandemic. We may not
see the great changes we hope for, at least on grand scales. I do pray for it
though. I dare to pray for it. May God bless and keep those working to keep us
safe and healthy. We pray and we work towards it but my prayer for you is that
those realities, those challenges, these powers and principalities that rule in
our world still, will not reduce you or twist you.
Instead, may you rise to the demands of our time
with dignity, grace, and not-sitting-down-not-shutting-up hope. May
justice roll down like mighty waters, as the prophet Amos said, sweeping up and
away everything meant to diminish the image of God in any of us.
It is precisely in these moments, in this
wilderness, in this apocalypse, that we need to be rooted in the love of God.
May our roots go down deep into that marvelous Love. May you bear the fruit of
the Spirit - that love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,
gentleness, and self control - right in the teeth of despair and brokenness. I
pray that your life will become an outpost of hope and love. May the things
that were meant to destroy us be cast down and come to nothing. May you rise
from the ashes with a grin, a wild heart that won’t be talked out of love and
possibility.
May 2022 bring you unexpected goodness and hope. May
you light a candle in the dark night and tend that flame, set it high in a
window, let the world see that you are not undone, not yet. In fact, I
pray for love - however that looks and however it comes - for you this year. Lashings
of love, love that covers you and holds you, love that restores you and blesses
you.
May we release our efforts to save ourselves and to
save the world, resting in God’s good salvation, more than enough salvation.
May new strength come to you in your sleep and in the stars. May you endure
well. May
your life be peaceful and whole from the inside out.
I pray for gentleness in you and for you this year. May
you see the goodness of God in your actual days. May you be given wisdom and
joy, may you walk in truth and justice. I pray for cold water when you are
parched, for warmth when you are cold, for a hand to hold when you are lonely,
for the steady and abiding presence of God in the night.
I bless you. I bless you for the work God has given
you to do. I bless you for the ways you have loved this year, for the resolute
faithfulness of you. I bless the unseen and uncelebrated ways you have done your bit to
repair the world. I bless your resilience and your
suffering, I bless how you have forgiven and released and welcomed this
year. I
bless the work you do and pray that you find God’s good rhythm there.
As we turn towards a new year, may the God of all
goodness and hope walk with you on this road, singing as we make our way home.
May you be welcomed in this new year with joy and rest.
And may you greet 2022 with courage and grace, knowing and resting and abiding in your belovedness.
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