Sunday December 29-The psalter ends with praises to God. Ps. 148 moves us to the end of the psalter as we move toward the end of the year. It moves in sequence from the heavenly realm of that time to living things on earth to human life. (Horn is a locution for power) Please consider writing up your own psalm of praise to god for the year 2013.Be serious about it. What was praiseworthy about the year, publically and privately?
Monday- OK maybe most fht extended Christmas gatherings are over, but New Year’s beckons. I remember when collegefootball had fewer bowl games and January 1 was the big day for those games.From Howard Thurman When the song of the angels is stilled,When the star in the sky is gone,When the kings and princes are home,When the shepherds are back with their flock,The work of Christmas begins:To find the lost,To heal the broken,To feed the hungry,To release the prisoner,To rebuild the nations,To bring peace among brothers,To make music in the heart.
New Year’s Eve-A very good spiritual exercise is to review the year along with the day, if that is your custom. January comes from the Roman Janus who is pictured looking both forward and backward. NPR had a good piece on the past by reminding us that the starlight we see is often millions of years old by the time it reaches us.When did you feel most yourself, not presenting the self that others expect to see?
January 1, 2014-We picture the new year as a baby. Ss a spiritual exercise consider imagining the baby to look like the baby of Bethlehem. Luke tells us that the child grew over the years. What spiritual (one of my resolutions should be to be able to type spiritual without messing it up) gifts would you like to see grow in 2014. (2014, it still sounds like science fiction to me). Where are we spiritual infants and where are we spiritual adults? why do we so prize intellectual endeavor in everything but the faith?
Thursday-Jesus was circumcised in the appropriate period according to Luke.He is determined to have us see Jesus as a typical Jewish male child. Our branch of the faith makes an explicit link from circumcision to baptism as does Colossians 2. Both of them place us in a community, so that we are not cast adrift by the vicissitudes of life.
Friday-Here’s a New Year’s quote from chesterton:“the object of a new year is not that we should have a new year, but rather that we should have a new soul.”
― G.K. Chesterton That is an elegant way of seeking to be born anew/born from above.Where do you feel a craving to be made new? where do you need to be pulled out from a rut?
Saturday-From Kenneth Tanner on facebook-At the dedication of the Temple, Solomon said of this tightly wrapped bundle of dust, "the heaven of heavens cannot contain you." Yet contained he was for nine months within this weary teenager, smeared with dirt, sweaty from her labor, catching her breath in time with this baby, the One who in the beginning breathed the stars into the astonished sky above them.
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