I wish I could give the artist credit above but the little sketch appeared on Facebook awhile back with no clue to as to it's painter. I liked it and I think it is well to post it on New Year's eve.
I looked up the origin of the first of January as a starting point for the year and it is credited to Julius Caesar who re-arranged the calendar to accommodate it. I never liked his choice. Every teacher knows that September 1 is the beginning of the new year.
But tradition wins and so here we are looking back at 2017. Everyone will have something to say about it. Anne Lamott, one of my favorite writers, put out a column on her Facebook recently sending comfort to those who are starting their diets AGAIN.
And we all know about those dratted "resolutions" we are supposed to be making.
Many many of us found this past year to be a huge disappointment.
Not in the living and loving of our own, of course, but in the government and the tragedies of violence and weather. Many times through the past year I've need to re-group and re-dedicate and re-think and re-shape and in some cases re-linquish. As an optimistic person by nature I've had to cling to hope and prayer more than ever.
So as 2017 draws to a close I'd like to share a prayer:
As the year draws to a close, a prayer by Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador, written shortly before his assassination in 1980, offers this insight:
"It helps now and then, to step back and take the long view. The kingdom is not only beyond our efforts, it is even beyond our vision. We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction of the magnificent enterprise that is God's work. Nothing we do is complete, which is another way of saying that the kingdom always lies beyond us.
"We plant the seeds that one day will grow," Romero continued. "We lay foundations that will need further development.
"We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that. This enables us to do something, and to do it very well. It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning . . . an opportunity for the Lord's grace to enter and do the rest.
"We may never see the end results," Romero concluded, "but that is the difference between the master builder and the worker. We are workers, not master builders; ministers, not messiahs. We are prophets of a future not our own. Amen."
"It helps now and then, to step back and take the long view. The kingdom is not only beyond our efforts, it is even beyond our vision. We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction of the magnificent enterprise that is God's work. Nothing we do is complete, which is another way of saying that the kingdom always lies beyond us.
"We plant the seeds that one day will grow," Romero continued. "We lay foundations that will need further development.
"We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that. This enables us to do something, and to do it very well. It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning . . . an opportunity for the Lord's grace to enter and do the rest.
"We may never see the end results," Romero concluded, "but that is the difference between the master builder and the worker. We are workers, not master builders; ministers, not messiahs. We are prophets of a future not our own. Amen."
With that hope and thought in our hearts let us set out to do what we can letting God's grace enter in and do the rest. Happy New Year.
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