TAKE ME INTO A NEW YEAR, Gracious God. Help me to continue looking for meaning, seeking peace, praying for light, dancing for joy, working for justice, and singing your praise. I go into the new year filled with expectations, a touch of worry, and a bundle of hope. I do not journey into the new year alone but with you as my guide, with a commitment to my disciplines, with a community of family, friends, and faith. Take me into the new year, Creator of beauty and wonder. Bless me with the companionship of Jesus, and gift me with the guidance and power of the Spirit. Amen.

- Larry James Peacock
Openings: A Daybook of Saints, Psalms, and Prayer

From page 398 of Openings: A Daybook of Saints, Psalms, and Prayer by Larry James Peacock. Copyright © 2003

From Upper Room

A Prayer: For the Birth of a New Year

God of winter morning,
Of new day born from the waters of night;
A feeble cry from Mother Earth's horizon,
A murmured moan from lingering stars;
Infant soft, blue-veined is your child, Dawn.
Into the waiting arms of Your people
You gift this newness to us...

O God, help us to look with awe-laden eyes,
Let us hear with soft-edged hearts the first cries
of the New Year, of a new day,
that we may come running as if life,
fragile and tear-stained,
awaits us.

O Creator, lover of life,
What child has been born as Day this hour?
Stretched across heaven and earth,
Arms wide open
Waiting for us to return the embrace --
To count fingers and toes of light and rivers,
bird and flower,
woman, man, and child.
Straining to hear a whispered word --
A song of peace,
A hymn of promise,
A lullaby of justice.

God who was, now is, and will still be,
Show us the way of newness --
conceived by Your desire,
born of Your Love's labor,
made visible,
embraceable.

O Lord,
In this now toddling year,
we move, outstretched in hope, toward You.

Amen


Pamela Hawkins is serves as Managing Editor of Weavings: A Journal of the Christian Spiritual Life. An Elder in the United Methodist Church, she lives in Nashville, Tennessee with her husband Ray. Pamela is the author of the Upper Room books The Awkward Season: Prayers for Lent and Simply Wait: Cultivating Stillness in the Season of Advent.

Monday, December 27, 2010
Live in the world
Live in the world as if only
God and your soul were in it;
then your heart will never be
made captive by any earthly thing.
... St. John of the Cross (1542-1591)
posted by Sam Roberts at 6:33 AM 0 comments

John Donne (1573-1631)
This was the fulness of time,
when Christ Jesus did come,
that the Messiah should come.
It was so to the Jews,
and it was so to the Gentiles too...
Christ hath excommunicated no nation,
no shire, no house, no man;
He gives none of His ministers
leave to say to any man, thou art
not redeemed; He gives no wounded or
afflicted conscience leave to
say to itself, I am not redeemed.
... John Donne (1573-1631)

The sunset of the year, and the new one to dawn...

INTO OUR WORLD, where we usually stay busy and frequently feel tired, God comes. God comes to us where we are, somewhere between darkness and light. God comes to us as we are, anxious and worried, hopeful and blessed. God comes to us as wonderful and surprising as angels singing to shepherds on a hill. God comes to us now as a small baby in a manger.

Let us marvel at the Holy Child, worship on bended knee, and sing with the angels. Let us be blessed by the gaze of the Christ child. God looks at us with love and great joy that spreads to all people.

- Larry James Peacock
Openings: A Daybook of Saints, Psalms, and Prayer

From page 392 of Openings: A Daybook of Saints, Psalms, and Prayer by Larry James Peacock. Copyright & copy; 2003 by Larry James Peacock. All rights reserved

The Spirit is breathing.

All those with eyes to see,
women and men with ears for hearing
detect a coming dawn;
a reason to go on.

They seem small, these signs of dawn
perhaps ridiculous.

All those with eyes to see,
Women and men with ears for hearing
uncover in the night
a certain gleam of light;
they see the reason to go on.
(Dom Helder Camera, Its Midnight, Lord)

Another way to keep Christ in Christmas.

A small rambling thought on the Christmas stories:
I am not beyond blending and co mingling the two separate nativity stories of Matthew and Luke. Luke includes Mary's magnificant in which she speaks of the hungry being filled with good things and the rich being sent away empty (Luke 1:53). I thought of those shepherds coming hungry for signs of hope and attention, being filled with good things. And then in Matthew's tradition I see those magi who have followed the star. I see them as the rich who have opened their treasure chests and offered the gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. Are they the rich who go away empty, because they have offered it, in devotion to Christ? They do not ask for more. The rich are sent away empty. It's part of the Christmas miracle. Can we practice such emptiness? Are we the rich who are able to empty ourselves , in our love for God. May the scriptures be fulfilled.