Happy New Year

Crowned (Happy New Year)

About 365 days since I last sat to write a “New Year’s Message,”
And I can’t help but loosely echo the words of the Psalmist…
In the 65th psalm, he says,
“Praise waits for You, God, in Zion.
Vows shall be performed to You.
You who hear prayer, unto You shall all men come.
Our sins did not overwhelm us, because You atoned for our transgressions.
How blessed we are that You have chosen us and caused us to come near to You.
How privileged we are to be able to live in Your courts.
You have positioned us in Your secret place,
And filled us with the goodness of Your treasuries.
By awesome deeds of righteousness, You answered us and brought us salvation.
You have shown Yourself to be the hope of all the earth, of those far and near.
By Your power and strength You have brought great things into being,
Stilled the roaring of the seas, its waves, and the turmoil of nations.
Even those in the farthest reaches of the earth
Have come to know and fear Your wonders.
You have set songs of joy into our dawns and dusks.
You have blessed the works of our hands and brought us increase;
Indeed, You crown our year with Your bounty,
And cause our storehouses to overflow with abundance.
Everything in sight declares Your praise with joy.”

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Gratitude, Always

It’s a minute to midnight,
I’m watching the clock tick-tock its way to a new dawn;
Trying to capture the exact moment of the transition;
This wouldn’t be my first attempt,
Though each time I’d managed to miss the tangibility
Of that sharp dividing line separating old from new.

Sometimes I wish everything would come to a standstill –
A moment of silence to acknowledge the passing of a season.
Sometimes I wish there would be a tremor
Through the fabric of existence,
To signal the birth of a new cycle.

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Sounds Of The Day

Detailed Gold Border New Year Card (1).png

There’s a sound that echoes from the earth on days like today;
It spans the spectrum of the audible to the inaudible,
And emanates from the animate and the inanimate.
It is such a unique breathtaking sound:
A rolling, roaring, rushing, rising, whirling, spreading,
Bubbling, soul-stirring, ascending cascade of thoughts and postures;
A sound tellingly tangible and very visible in the right light.
It is filled with demands, accusations, confessions, flatteries,
Mirth, sadness, pain, reverence, disdain, affront, gratitude;
And an inexhaustible list of other states of the human condition,
Together with the various states and cries of nature.
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Change

Things are not the same, and you probably don’t need me to tell you.
But sometimes, I need to consciously apprise myself of the changes occurring.
Change comes, bidden or unbidden;
Like time, it’s always in effect, with every tick of the clock;
Change always occurs, passively or actively, positively or negatively.
Some changes are ridden like waves,
Some unfortunately, we allow to tread all over us.
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