Jen Wilkin on New Year's

Jen Wilkin posted this last year, and I want to remember it. Maybe you do, too?

However last year went for you, however this year will go, the God of infinite years stands witness and watch. He can be trusted. 

Our limited vantage point on time may justifiably cause us to question how all can be made right. Sometimes more than one human lifetime must pass before grief can resolve into understanding, before justice is served, before bitter is made sweet. He holds all time in His hands - past, present, and future.

Some of us traverse years of happiness flecked only here and there with sorrow. Others walk a different path. We need the Lord, and we need one another to keep planting one foot firmly in front of another - to carry and be carried in our turn. We take up the precious and terrible burden of this life, together, and present ourselves, together, at the start of a New Year, as living sacrifices, mindful that time is a gift, mindful that it is God alone who establishes the work of our hands.

Thank you, O God who Was, and Is, and Is to Come, for this threshold upon which we stand, which You surround behind and before. We commit this year to Your care.

We resolve to trust You collectively when individual faith falters.

We resolve to lend courage to one another, that all may have spiritual daily bread.

We resolve to recognize with closer attention Your daily goodness to us, to savor joyful moments, to offer regular gratitude in our prayers.

Indeed, may this be the year our thanksgiving outstrips and overruns our asking. For that would be 365 days well-numbered and well-spent, no matter what they may give or take. 

We look to the saints who have gone before us, who bear witness to Your faithfulness to all generations. We renew our trust that You will be faithful to ours. All time is Yours, O Lord. Help us to steward well the years You entrust to us. Amen.