New Year's Post.
Ladies and Gentlemen, if you missed it, I feel that it is my solemn duty to alert you to the new year that has overtaken us.
Time for the encouraging pep talk!
This is a time of great excitement and potential, and there can be no doubt that we will correct all of the things that we did wrong last year, just like we do every year.
Having learned so many valuable lessons in the past year, all that remains is for our now savvier persons to glide through this new year on auto-pilot. Our new found wisdom will propel us over those stumbling blocks of years past.
Gone are our inconsiderate nature, perversions, and bad table manners. We will get back in shape, reform our spending habits, and restore some measure of beauty to the English language as it is spoken among us. We will study harder, curse less often, and refrain from wishing for the immediate destruction of that jerk who cut in front of us and made us miss the light. Mankind finally has really got it's stuff together, and this years promising slate of presidential hopefuls bodes well for the political future of America.
We will all be better children, parents, siblings, and spouses. We will be patient, faithful, considerate, kind, and good. We will also be more amusing and easier to get along with, our senses of humor will enliven every hour, rivaled only by our extraordinary depth of thought.
Or perhaps not.
Perhaps this year will continue on in the same pattern as all those that came before. Perhaps we will lie, cheat, and steal; despise our work, mistreat our friends, and speed in the construction zone.
Indeed, this next year will be much like the last; this ugly truth is the second most certain thing I know--narrowly edging out a Packers Superbowl victory in 2012, which took a close third.
Our paltry efforts will be thwarted--by ourselves--and the cycle will continue.
That which has been is what will be,
That which is done is what will be done,
And there is nothing new under the sun.
And here, at the end of a year of political and economic turmoil, these words seem grim indeed. We live in hard times, and do not want to believe that it must always be so. Death is the inheritance which men receive from their fathers, along with all the properties in that estate.
Yet worldly hardship is not the only thing that continues under the sun.
We are now a scant seven days removed from Christmas, the celebration of the birth of our Lord. Our God took on flesh and became a man, joined himself to us, and took on the inheritance which fell to all men. He brake our brokenness by sacrificing himself upon the cross, and gave us His very Body and Blood, to eat and to drink, in order that we should receive an inheritance, not as befits the children of men, but as befits the only begotten Son of the Father.
There is promise to be found in these words, because Jesus lives. He came once, to join himself to us, and still He returns again and again, in His living body and blood, that by Him we might be fed; and thus strengthened, come at last into his kingdom, which we inherit by that same eating and drinking.
And of course there is the final promise, that even as He became a man and ascended to His Father; He will at last return for us, and we shall follow in our perfected bodies, to go where he is gone.
Even if we, this year, persist in all the foolishness that has marked our past, it will be alright. Because our God has loved us, loves us, and will love us. He has given Himself, is giving Himself, and will continue to give Himself for us; for we were His, are His, and always will be His.
The Lord is good, and His mercy endureth forever. And thus it has been, is, and shall be.
A+D 2012
Time for the encouraging pep talk!
This is a time of great excitement and potential, and there can be no doubt that we will correct all of the things that we did wrong last year, just like we do every year.
Having learned so many valuable lessons in the past year, all that remains is for our now savvier persons to glide through this new year on auto-pilot. Our new found wisdom will propel us over those stumbling blocks of years past.
Gone are our inconsiderate nature, perversions, and bad table manners. We will get back in shape, reform our spending habits, and restore some measure of beauty to the English language as it is spoken among us. We will study harder, curse less often, and refrain from wishing for the immediate destruction of that jerk who cut in front of us and made us miss the light. Mankind finally has really got it's stuff together, and this years promising slate of presidential hopefuls bodes well for the political future of America.
We will all be better children, parents, siblings, and spouses. We will be patient, faithful, considerate, kind, and good. We will also be more amusing and easier to get along with, our senses of humor will enliven every hour, rivaled only by our extraordinary depth of thought.
Or perhaps not.
Perhaps this year will continue on in the same pattern as all those that came before. Perhaps we will lie, cheat, and steal; despise our work, mistreat our friends, and speed in the construction zone.
Indeed, this next year will be much like the last; this ugly truth is the second most certain thing I know--narrowly edging out a Packers Superbowl victory in 2012, which took a close third.
Our paltry efforts will be thwarted--by ourselves--and the cycle will continue.
That which has been is what will be,
That which is done is what will be done,
And there is nothing new under the sun.
And here, at the end of a year of political and economic turmoil, these words seem grim indeed. We live in hard times, and do not want to believe that it must always be so. Death is the inheritance which men receive from their fathers, along with all the properties in that estate.
Yet worldly hardship is not the only thing that continues under the sun.
We are now a scant seven days removed from Christmas, the celebration of the birth of our Lord. Our God took on flesh and became a man, joined himself to us, and took on the inheritance which fell to all men. He brake our brokenness by sacrificing himself upon the cross, and gave us His very Body and Blood, to eat and to drink, in order that we should receive an inheritance, not as befits the children of men, but as befits the only begotten Son of the Father.
There is promise to be found in these words, because Jesus lives. He came once, to join himself to us, and still He returns again and again, in His living body and blood, that by Him we might be fed; and thus strengthened, come at last into his kingdom, which we inherit by that same eating and drinking.
And of course there is the final promise, that even as He became a man and ascended to His Father; He will at last return for us, and we shall follow in our perfected bodies, to go where he is gone.
Even if we, this year, persist in all the foolishness that has marked our past, it will be alright. Because our God has loved us, loves us, and will love us. He has given Himself, is giving Himself, and will continue to give Himself for us; for we were His, are His, and always will be His.
The Lord is good, and His mercy endureth forever. And thus it has been, is, and shall be.
A+D 2012
Amen and Amen.
ReplyDeleteWhat you said. Exactly.
ReplyDeleteHappy New Year, with much love.