January Twenty-Twenty One

 

Prepare me, dear Lord, to start this [year] again. I am ready to keep climbing even through the mountain is steep. I am willing to keep searching even through the fog is thick. I am able to keep praying even through my words sound hollow. Take these offerings, and use them to open my heart to a new song. Remove from me all that is keeping me unwilling or unable to sing so that I can praise the wonder of clouds parting and Love revealed. Amen. -Becca Stevens, Love Heals

“And I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year:
“Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown.”
And he replied:
“Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the Hand of God.
That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way.”
So I went forth, and finding the Hand of God, trod gladly into the night.
And He led me towards the hills and the breaking of day in the lone East.”

- Minnie Louise Haskins

And so we take the ragged fragments, the patches of darkness, that give shape to the light;
the scraps of desires unslaked or realized; the memories of spaces of blessing, of pain…
And so we lay them at the threshold, God: bid you hold them, bless them, use them;
ask you tend them, mend them, transform them to keep us warm, make us whole, and send us forth. –Jan Richardson, Night Visions

I won’t fear what tomorrow brings. With each morning I’ll rise and sing. My God’s love will lead me through. You are my peace in my troubled sea.  -Rend Collective 

I love the big fresh starts, the clean slates like birthdays and new years, but I also really like the idea that we can get up every morning and start over.
-Kristin Armstrong

Dear Child of God, I write these words because we all experience sadness, we all come at times to despair, and we all lose hope that the suffering in our lives and in the world will ever end. I want to share with you my faith and my understanding that this suffering can be transformed and redeemed. There is no such thing as a totally hopeless case. Our God is an expert at dealing with chaos, with brokenness, with all the worst that we can imagine. God created order out of disorder, cosmos out of chaos, and God can do so always, can do so now—in our personal lives and in our lives as nations, globally… Indeed, God is transforming the world now—through us—because God loves us.  ―Desmond Tutu, God Has a Dream: A Vision of Hope for Our Time