Holidays such as Christmas and New Year’s are particularly nice when they fall on a weekend because we all get an extra day to pick up, clean up, and to think. Many European countries have a custom of the head of state delivering a New Year Day message, one that calls for resilience and hope for the year to come.
As the winter grows more intense in Ukraine, Putin, like Stalin before him, thought he could bring Ukraine to its knees. However, a people determined to maintain its identity and independence have shown resilience. But where is the hope they and we need?
In the late 1930s and until Pearl Harbor, America at the time really thought the ocean served as a buffer; however, it did not and still does not. The effects of this brutal war go far beyond Ukraine, Europe, and even us in America. We are one world. Our hope lies in realizing that.
Prayer for the Day
In the quiet of the early morning of a year still very new.
We look to you, O God, for hope that this year will be different;
Still in the liturgical season of Christmas, we reach out to you,
For we do not want the promise of new life to evaporate.
Grant, O Holy One, that we are able to live by the words we say,
And extend your promise of a future of peace to all.
In the name of the One who is your promise of peace,
Even Christ Jesus our Lord, Amen.
Thoughts for the Day
Because of our faith in Christ and humankind, we must apply our humble efforts to the construction of a more just and humane world. And I want to declare emphatically: Such a world is possible.
- Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, Argentine activist, from his Nobel Lecture
Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come. You wait and watch and work; you don't give up.
- Anne Lamott, American novelist and nonfiction writer
How bent, my being, how you moan for me!
Hope in God, for yet I will acclaim God for a rescuing presence.
My God, my being is bent for my plight, therefore I recall you
From Jordan land from the Hermons and Mount Mizar.
Deep unto deep calls out at the sound of your channels
All your breakers and waves have surged over me.
Psalm 42: 3-7