Fr. Don's Daily Reflection - January 1, 2025
Psalm 62: “In you alone is my soul at rest. My help comes from You.”
The seasons of the church year, though celebrated in vestments of differing color, in many ways clothe one essential: we need to begin again with hope, decision and encouragement. At Christmas we celebrate our rebirth as sons and daughters of God as we recall the beginning of our salvation, the birth of Jesus. At Easter we pray to rise with Christ to new life. New beginnings.
How much we need to begin again is underlined by all the jokes about how quickly we fail to live up to our purposes. But it is to be hoped we all have some experience of beginning again. Jim and Jan, married twenty years ago and divorced two years later, reunited and pronounced their vows to each other a second time. All seems to be going well for them and their offspring.
In Lamentations 3:23 we hear that God’s mercies are new each day. On our part, each day can see a new beginning. An unhappy past, a bad day, a bad week, a bad experience need not sour us on today, tomorrow, the future. Bad times need not add up evidence that we have been singled out by the Creator for “divine persecution”.
A middle-aged writer in the course of an interview revealed that as a child of ten he had come home from school to find his mother murdered. Years later and with that singular background he was able to sum up what that experience and life had taught him, something helpful for us as we begin again. He said: "The abandonment of self-pity is the beginning of wisdom." There is no reason we should not put behind us the hurts and failures of yesterday and begin anew today.
Psalm 27: “I believe I shall see the Lord’s goodness / in the land of the living.
Wait for the Lord; be strong; / be stouthearted, and wait for the Lord!”
