Happy New Year!
Tonight the numbers on our phones will blink from 11:59 to 12:00 and the world will shift from 2019 to 2020. This is a very human event. We are the ones who invented clocks and calendars, but even so, there is always excitement about a New Year.
That blink from 11:59-12:00 represents a moment when the past officially becomes the past and the future arrives.
So today a prayer for the blink.
Lord of every moment, past, present and future,
We blink and the world changes. A new year appears before us.
2019 becomes the past, shifts from now to memories. We thank you for the reassuring rhythm of the days. The sun rises and sunsets that secure us. We thank you for the hours of peace, the times of rest, the moments of joy. We sit for a moment with our memories, and they become snapshots. A picture of friends gathered on our deck. A child learning to crawl. The woods as we walked around the lake at Raccoon River Park.
There are memories of struggles too. Angry moments. Grief and loss. Times when all seemed at the edge of lost.
But the reassuring rhythm of the days and the season rocks us like a child in its mother’s arms, and we find ourselves at peace, or on the way there.
This is a rhythm only you could create, an assurance only you could offer.
2020 arrives tonight. 366 days! (A bonus day for Leap Year!) The new year feels fresh. It feels like an opportunity. This new year invites us to peer into the mystery of the unknown. What will 2020 hold for us?
Making new year’s resolutions is a futile game. They seldom hold, but I want to promise you this, Lord. I will again count on the rhythm of life you offer, the sunrises and the sunsets, the seasons and the solstice.
And I pray, Lord, that I live 2020 as you would have me live it,
still believing that you love me beyond my mistakes and confusion,
confident that you will help me find my way through what I can’t understand,
opening my life to your holy disruption dislodging what I thought I knew and wanted to make room for more of your grace in action, trusting that there is much for me to do, suffering to end, many to love, knowing as sure as sunrises and sunsets, that you never blink. You will be present in every moment.
God of this moment, amen.
Blessings and Happy New Year to you all--
Pastor Cindy
Pastor Cindy Hickman
West Des Moines United Methodist Church
720 Grand Ave
West Des Moines, Iowa 50265
515-279-0826
We worship on Sunday mornings in a traditional way at 8:30 and in a casual way at 11. You are invited! Come and worship and know that you are among friends.
And now! We are Livestreaming our 8:30 worship service!
A Bit of Good News to Share! Our Special Christmas Eve offering will be used to support our Everybody Eats! ministry ensuring as far as we are able, everyone will have nutritious food. The wonderful people who attended our Christmas Eve services gave an offering of $3,137! Through these generous gifts, everybody will eat!
Our regular programming will resume on Sunday. See you then! And again, Happy New Year!
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