As we look out on the horizons of a new year, it is hard to see your promise with fresh eyes. The memories we carry in our bodies, the patterns we know from the lives we have lived, and the stories we have told cloud our vision. We are weighed down by the fears of all the years, the old fables, the generational wounds, the trusty and cautious hopes that got us through this far.
But God, you are not the slowly bending arc of history. You are not the past warmed up to meet us yet again in infinite and gently looping cycles. You are not likelihood and probability, plausible outcomes and logical conclusions. You do not come to us in the slow march of progress or the incremental degradation of structures and institutions.
Your story is the deeper magic from before the drums of history, before our forming stories and earthen bodies set us here to walk this particular, human road — and yet you walk with us even here in this in-between space.
As we look to a new year, we ask that you dispel the ghosts we conjure and fear. Meet us again with genuine newness. We are so tired of what has been, so afraid of what may come again. Stay with us as we wait for what will be.
Spirit of new life, give us eyes to see what feels implausible. Grant us the hope and the diligence to follow the seeds of revolution and revelation already planted. Point us again to the surprise and delight of nature and neighbor. Reintroduce us to the people you have made and the communities to which you have called us. Grant us the presence and good sense to look up and out, to seek eyes that might meet our own and sun to touch our skin. Remind us that the past we drag with us does not govern your future, that the future you bring is broader and wider and newer than all we have ever known.
As we look out on the horizon of a new year, give us the courage and trust to see you even there. Join us as we walk into your new morning.
Amen
by Karen Rohrer, Presbyterian Minister and staff member at Princeton Theological Seminary