Welcome to 2025!
I wonder if you have responded to Dom's invitation to make this year a year of intentionality, of welcoming God's presence into every facet of your life, and of seeing the sacred in everything.
We are now nearly at the end of week 1 of this year. My teenage granddaughter was sharing with me about “Quitters’ Day”. Apparently research has shown that most New Year's resolutions are dropped by the end of the first two weeks of January, so there is now another official “Quitters’ Day”—the 2nd Friday of January, this year January 10!
But that is not you and me! The beauty of walking with our God is that His mercies are new every day, each morning dawns with the possibility of a new start. And even beyond that, His forgiveness offers a new start at any moment we recognize our stumbling in our desire for a new way of being with God.
The Value of New Beginnings
However, I appreciate the opportunity of the beginning that a new year offers. I love my ritual of putting away the calendar which has hung on my wall all year --well scribbled on-- and replacing it with a brand new one, always a gift from my daughter. For me, it holds the possibility of my life being different in the year ahead.
This is also a time for me to evaluate the year just passed. Richard Rohr encourages us to look back over the year and consider how we've changed and if it's time for a different spiritual practice. As I did so this year, I realized an area where the past year has brought amazing change for me.
What happened for Me
At the beginning of 2024, I decided to add the welcoming prayer to my morning practices. It is a prayer I'd been introduced to several years previously but had never used consistently. So, this past year morning by morning I recited this prayer:
The Welcoming Prayer was originally written by Father Thomas Keating, but I have changed some of the words.
Welcome, welcome, welcome. I welcome everything that comes to me today, knowing it's for my healing.
I welcome all thoughts, feelings, emotions, persons, situations, and circumstances. I let go of my desire for power and control. I let go of my desire for acceptance, affection, esteem, and approval. I let go of my desire for safety and security. I let go of my desire to change my situation, my circumstances, my people or even myself. I open myself to Your love and presence, LORD, and to Your action in my life today.
Amen.
For the past couple of years, my journaling has included poems that express my way of being with God intimately-- my struggles and my joys, my way of seeing Him in nature and in the ordinariness of every day. I've never wanted to share my writing with others; these poems are far too revealing of what I at times have called “my crazy way of talking with God”.
Yet somehow I shared one with Dom, and he encouraged me to publish them as a book!
Because of the joy I have with God, I have long wanted to share my way of being with Him with others (hence the blogging) to invite them into a different way of seeing God in their everyday lives. But... publish... my poems?
Then Dom suggested I invite a group of friends to read my poems and give me feedback!
What? No! Well, maybe a few close friends who already know my craziness and celebrate it with me! And yet I found myself welcoming the idea, and I duly invited people from different parts of my life to my “baby shower”. Those who know me well were amazed that I would be so open. So was I!
And then I realized: this is the fruit of my praying the welcoming prayer daily, of trusting that everything that happened could be for my healing (and I often wrestled with God as I said those words), that I could let go of my desire for control, for approval, for security…that I could trust God’s presence and love and allow Him to be in control of my life! This is a huge WOW for me!
What Can Happen for You
So, my encouragement to you today is to embrace some spiritual practice you've been aware of and yet have never wanted or chosen to make your daily practice, and to continue with it, even when it seems boring or unproductive. Remember that the Holy Spirit is working in your life to bring fruit, and fruit takes time to grow: first the tree’s leaves appear in the early spring; then the buds appear; then hopefully bees stop by; then the petals fall, and the little fruit begins the slow process of growing into that delicious apple you'll eventually enjoy in the fall.
And this time of waiting to see the fruit, every day, you will sit with your Father as His invited guest, while He decks you with delight! (See Psalm 5 in the Message Bible)
How will you cultivate that holy longing that stirs in your heart for more meaning in your life? What practice is the Holy Spirit inviting you to embrace; as Dom says, not just as adding another task to your day, another box to cross off, but as a way to reimagine your life in your awareness of God's presence with you always-- that every choice matters…
And if this conjures up in your mind the thought of God judging you and finding you wanting when you fail, or of you judging yourself, let that thought go-- this is where spiritual warfare comes in-- and reaffirm and reconnect with the God who loves you more than you can ever hope to grasp.
Being Held in God’s Love
Welcome to Paul's prayer:
“And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge-- that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.”
The plans God has for you in this year ahead can only be realized as you take the risk to open yourself to Him. God is for you even more than you are for yourself. Any negative thoughts that come into your mind come for the one Paul called the “accuser”. How often do we agree with him, instead of agreeing with God?
New Year, New You
Yes! Not because you have written a new list of all the great things you plan to achieve in 2025, but because you belong to God; you already are a new creation! You have nothing to prove, nothing to earn. But, you have a new opportunity to live out of the love of God in your heart.
Be filled with the knowledge of God’s unfailing love for you. Out of that love, become a lover and watch how your world changes, how every day is transformed with possibility and the unexpected.
Find God in the ordinariness of each day. Reject the accusations of the accuser. Lean into God’s love and forgiveness! Above all, have fun!
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