Read Ecclesiastes 3:1-13.
Happy New Year! Welcome to 2020, the year I’m sure every eye doctor in the world has been waiting for so they can make some lame jokes every day about “focusing on 2020 vision.” But that is kind of what we do on January 1st, isn’t it? Make resolutions so we can refocus our lives.
That makes starting this January 1st with the passage from Ecclesiastes such a gift. The author basically says, “You stand at the edge of a new year. A bunch of stuff is going to happen – stuff you’ll do yourself and things that will happen because that’s just how life is. Some of it will be amazing, while some of it will suck beyond belief, and a whole bunch of ordinary, routine, day-in-and-day-out decisions will have to be made. You may not even see how God is working for good through it all (even though that’s what we know God does). But don’t spend time worrying – that’s just a waste of time. Just see the life – eating and drinking and the work you do (homework, work-work, classwork, relationship-work, self-work, faith-work) as a gift from God to you.
“Because God’s gift to us is the happiness we get from our food and drink and from the work we do.” (Ecclesiastes 3:13 CEV)
Not only is the life you have right now a gift to you, but you and your life as it is are also a gift from God to the world right where you live. Maybe the only resolution we need to make this year is to try and remember this.
Pray
God, thank you for my life, for this year, and even for the work I will do (even if I don’t see how it all fits together). Help me remember your gifts to me, and that I am a gift from you to others.
In Christ’s name I pray, amen.
Rev. Gini Norris-Lane
Executive Director
Words for Waiting 