New Year’s Meditation
New Year’s Meditation
Genesis 1:1; 1 Corinthians 9:24-27; Philippians 3:12-14
Get your life direction as you start the year. Peter said, “Save yourselves from this untoward generation” (Acts 2:40 KJV): a generation that wasn’t going toward anything, a generation adrift. That purposeless generation ended up with the sudden purpose of crucifying Jesus. “A lost man,” said Joseph Conrad, “is a man lost in the insignificance of events.”*
It is not enough to wipe the slate clean; you must put something on it. What? Yourself at the center, around which life will be sketched? If so, then will be fulfilled these words: “Men who bow down to nothing cannot bear the burden of themselves”—“The tedious egotism of our day”—“Men unable to get themselves off their hands.” These words echo those of Jeremiah: “went after empty idols and became empty themselves” (Jer. 2:5 Moffatt). If the idol is an empty self, then life turns empty with it.
Put your hand in the hand of God as you start the New Year. Then the New Year will be a fresh adventure every morning and a quiet benediction every night. You will be alive in every portion of your being. You will be aware of God and humanity.
God—let me be aware.
Let me not stumble blindly down the ways,
Just getting somehow safely through the days,
Not even groping for another hand,
Not even wondering why it all was planned,
Eyes to the ground unseeking for the light,
Soul never aching for a wild-winged flight.
Please, keep me eager just to do my share.
God—let me be aware.
God—let me be aware.
Stab my soul fiercely with others’ pain,
Let me walk seeing horror and stain.
Let my hands, groping, find other hands.
Give me the heart that divines, understands.
Give me the courage, wounded, to fight.
Flood me with knowledge, drench me in light.
Please—keep me eager just to do my share.
God—let me be aware.**
* Published source unknown.
** Miriam Teichner, “Awareness” in Songs for Courage, ed. Zoë Beckley and Joseph Gollomb. (New York: Barse & Hopkins, 1917), 64.