A Blessing for the New Year
This was sent to my congregation in our “weekly-ish” e-newsletter, but I wish these blessings to all of you as well.
I was looking for a graphic for the background of the above header image. There are a whole lot of beautiful pictures out there to celebrate the New Year: lots of fireworks, gold, champagne glasses, bubbles, Christmas lights, and so on. I liked a lot of them and thought about using them. It’s great to celebrate the good things about 2013 and the hopes for 2014. And it’s a whole lot of awesome to set off fireworks and toast the night with a little bubbly (alcoholic or otherwise). I hope that you are celebrating in a way that is just right for you as you mark the passing of a year.
But, as I thought about all that party glitz, I realized that while it might be fun if your whole year was full of that kind of blessing … it probably wouldn’t be. And really, I don’t think it would be all that meaningful if it were just one solid string of party (well, maybe it would, but I’m going to guess not—one of the things I learned this year is that a meaningful life is not necessarily best defined as a string of “experiences”). So, I thought about what kind of blessing I most hope for you for the New Year, so here it is:
May you be blessed this year with all the usual blessings that you hear this time of year: health and happiness and certainly lots of reasons to celebrate.
But, may you also be blessed with lots of ordinary moments where you might stumble upon something beautiful (or not beautiful but arresting or strange or so ordinary as to raise hardly an eyebrow), because that’s where God is.
And may you be blessed with the sensitivity to sense the holy in the everyday, the ordinary, and the boring.
And most especially, may you be blessed by flexibility and openness so that seeing God where we don’t often expect, you may continue to experience the holy doing a new thing in and through you.
Blessings to you this New Year!
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Jabbok Dawn 