We’re drawing close to the end of the year. It’s a time we normally start thinking of New Year resolutions and wonder what 2025 will hold for us as well as others. We wonder if 2025 will be as tumultuous as was 2024. In spite of demands that Panama “return” the Canal or that Denmark sell Greenland, there are real changes on the horizon.
The question for us as Christians is how we will respond to certain policies that are more realistic, such as deporting undocumented AND legal immigrants, new oil and gas leases destroying the environment, and turning the clock back on reproductive rights, not to mention targeted actions against the LGBTQ+ community.
We must not lose faith in our ability to protect immigrants, the environment, and vulnerable communities. We still have the ability to act, whether it’s through legal action or coming down hard on politicians who support such policies. Despair is not an option. We will have losses, to be sure, but as a people who believe in Christmas hope, we must live as if we can help shape the future.
Prayer for the Day
You, O God, vaster than our minds can fathom, yet as intimate as love itself,
We profess that you are God and that we are your people;
Forgive us, we pray, when we forget whose we are;
Subsuming you to our daily concerns and ideals.
Infuse us with your redeeming grace giving us strength,
So we are able to share your grace with the world.,
In the name of him who is with us in the future as in the past,
Even Christ Jesus our Lord, Amen.
Thoughts for the Day
Courage is the price that life exacts for granting peace.
Amelia Earhart, pilot, adventurer (1897-1937)
When despair for the world grows in me ... I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief. I come into the presence of still water. And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light. For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
Wendell Berry, from his poem "The Peace of Wild Things"
The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear?
The Lord is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?
When evildoers assail me to devour my flesh –
My adversaries and foes – they shall stumble and fall
Though an army encamp against me, my heart shall not fear;
Though war rise up against me, yet shall I be confident.
Psalm 27: 1-3