New Years Eve
Reflection
God is the God of our yesterdays as well as our tomorrows. We look at the
year that has passed with its difficulties and disappointments as well as its joys and give thanks for life; we look toward the year to come with hope and confidence in God’s provident love. Grateful for the coming new year, we can hope to embrace new opportunities. The past year may have held times when events fell short of what we had hoped, times of unexpected sadness or loss. Now we can try to let that heal as we step into unknown possibilities. Confident in God’s abiding love, we can rejoice that we are part of God’s beautiful evolving creation and have the opportunity anew to build peace, light and hope into our world.
Prayer
God of our yesterdays, our today and our tomorrows, we thank you for
the gift of time.
Action
I will accept the gift of a new year with gratitude and open my mind and heart
to the touch of God’s spirit in the days ahead.
Suggested Reading
For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.
Jeremiah 29:11
To all men and women of goodwill, I express my prayerful trust that, as artisans of peace, they may work, day by day, to make this a good year.
Pope Francis
Look to this day:
For it is life, the very life of life.
In its brief course
Lie all the verities and realities of your existence.
The bliss of growth,
The glory of action,
The splendor of achievement
Are but experiences of time.
For yesterday is but a dream
And tomorrow is only a vision;
And today well-lived, makes
Yesterday a dream of happiness
And every tomorrow a vision of hope.
Look well therefore to this day;
Such is the salutation to the ever-new dawn!
Kalidasa
Time is the coin of your life. It is the only coin you have, and only you can determine how it will be spent. Be careful lest you let other people spend it
for you.
Carl Sandburg
Time is an equal opportunity employer. Each human being has exactly the same number of hours and minutes every day. Rich people can’t buy more hours. Scientists can’t invent new minutes. And you can’t save time to spend it on another day. Even so, time is amazingly fair and forgiving. No matter how much time you’ve wasted in the past, you still have an entire tomorrow.
Denis Waitely
Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
T.S. Eliot