New Year Resolution.
Or
Hope Human and Divine.
Jacqui and I do not stay up late to see the New Year in, we wake up early and go out in the car somewhere high up to see the first sunrise of the New Year. We take a flask and a breakfast of egg sandwiches, then take the dogs for a walk in the morning light. I think it is a better way to start the New Year rather than being jaded and tired after a late night.
It is of course often a challenge to find the motivation to get up early, especially when the weather is wet and cold. This morning a promising moonbeam came through the window and lay across the bed, but by the time we were up and ready to go out the rain was beating on the windows like it intended to push them in. It then takes some resolution to continue with our yearly ritual, especially when the house is warm and even the dogs seem reluctant to go out and get soaked in the rain. Yet in the back of our minds is the thought that we always feel better for it, and that we shouldn’t be put off. It requires the kind of hope that proceeds despite all the evidence to the contrary, the sort of hope that fuels resolution, the sort of hope that can get you through tough times. It’s kind of spiritual, but not that hope which we have in Christ which relies solely on the eternal generosity of God, it is a more transient human hope that has to invest trust in the future in order to make it happen, like a farmer planting seeds in the spring for a harvest in the autumn.
We ate our egg sandwiches facing East up on the Blakey Ridge with the rain and wind attempting to mine in through the car windows. The old name for the moors is ‘Blackamoor’ because in inclement weather that’s how they look – black and bleak. I love the moors but they do not make any allowance for human comfort when a dark mood takes them.
Would we even see the sun come up?
Well, we saw the morning light through the breaking clouds, and by the time we stepped out to walk the dogs the rain had ceased and just the bright light and bitter cold breeze remained. As we walked the moors in the big skies above light and dark contended in splendid drama.
So Happy New Year, and may you have the sort of hope that fuels resolution and opens up the future, and may you know the eternal hope that is the good gift of God,
“Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow of turning.”
James 1:17
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