Hope for a New Year

An email announces what’s known, a friend and mentor is gone too soon.  The subject line sits among the Christmas clutter of an inbox and it’s the only one I see.  Well wishers and joy givers call silent and the computer screen blinks dark.  Memorial service information forthcoming.  The cancer defeated his body, but never touched his soul.

Everyone’s uncle was lost this year too, unexpectedly tragic.  Veteran’s Day is made to remember and we will.  We cannot forget.  He talked football Sunday and walked into eternity Monday.  Why, God, can we never know our time? Or theirs?  So that we never let last moments become lost moments, unknowingly.  He wouldn’t have wanted a send-off or a goodbye.  We wish we could have at least said thank you, once or again.

This Christmas magic seems marred by the muck of it all.  Loss lingering behind the carols.  Our chosen tree glimmers hopeful white lights, signs of life. The less water it takes daily signifying an end. The tree, this season.  In the end, is all lost?

Our new friends, joined mostly in prayer, wait for a bed at Hopkins.  The same cancer that took the mentor, burrowing deep into this father.  A good man.  His family sorts stockings and holds onto hope, faith falls on hearts heavy.

God, help me to see deeply - Through= the fog of funerals into candles flickering hope.  Author Ann Voskamp writes, “Looking comes first if you’re ever to find the life you want... always, always - first the eyes.  Joy is a function of gratitude, and gratitude is a function of perspective.  You only being to change your life when you begin to change the way you see.”  (The Greatest Gift).

There is so much good.  I know it, I just need to feel it - I remember.   I’ll call it out until it reverberates in my bones.  See it and say it.  The God-joy unearthed among the barren ground.  Seeds of life deep within.  It’s the light of Christmas, new year renewal, the world hopefully expectant.

Our friends leave for Haiti the day after Christmas.  Pausing the sparkle of Hallmark Christmas’ to see the least and the lonely and to tell them they’re loved.  Making room in their inn.  There is always room to invite others in.

Other friends wait for emergency placement of a foster child.  Ready to receive the rejected.  Prepared to set another place at the table, not when it’s convenient, likely when it’s clearly not.  Their heart breaks for the broken.  Them, all broken and healing, healing others.

Voskamp continues, “Maybe sometimes the miracle begins by growing not in bitterness but in faithfulness - because, for all its supposed sophistication cynicism is simplistic.  In a fallen world, how profound is it to see the cracks?  The radicals and the reflective,... they are the ones on the road, in the fields, on the wall, pointing to the dawn of the new Kingdom coming, pointing to the light that breaks through all things broken, pointing to redemption always rising and the Advent coming again. Brilliant people don’t deny the dark; they are the ones who never stop looking for His light in everything.”  

God, this year, may I see beyond the dark to the glorious light always coming with each new day dawning.  Miracles in the mundane.  Hope for a new year.