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I’m thinking about gratitude today. Gratitude for the year just past of course. For some precious moments with family and friends both old and new. For new places discovered and people known. For my time with you here in Ringwood Presbyterian Church as we completed our “Turn the Page” process to set new sights on ministries yet to be discovered and then launched the Pastoral Nominating Committee’s work of finding the right leader to take you there.
But also, I’m thinking about gratitude for an open future. Oh yes, we may say with the preacher of Ecclesiastes that there is nothing new under the sun – that all our expectations and hopes of something new are sheer vanity and striving after illusions. But there is something about a New Year that, like a blank canvas before a talented master artist, invites all our energy, intelligence, imagination and love to pour forth. We are, of course still the same people who ended the year just past, with some of our efforts achieving less than our best results. But the new year promises us an opportunity to try again.
What if we each do that? What if we do that as a congregation? What if we decide right now to make 2024 the first year and not just “another year”? What do I mean by this? I mean that instead of just continuing our lives we take this opportunity to re-invent them, to resurrect them, to transform them by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ who washes away our sin and guilt and bad decisions but leaves only the wisdom gained from them?
May 2024 be the first year of the rest of our lives.
Grace and Peace,
Pastor Fred
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