When
we see a newborn baby we see how fragile human life is. We see the infant and
hear the infant breathing and we can hear her feeble cries. Although the child
has been born and although she is in our
world it seems that in those early days there is that struggle for life as
though the child has not yet fully crossed that bridge from eternity into
existence. We see as the days of its life pass from weeks into months how that
child takes on form, weight and flesh and how she grows. How in a relatively
short time she sits up and begins to take notice and not only can she can make
her presence known by demanding comfort and food but how too she smiles and
brings pleasure to all those around her. Then there she is it seems in no time
crawling and then beginning her first faltering steps falling and then rising
again with the determination that is the essential human spirit, the
determination to succeed, to live and to participate in this strange new world
that is so full of wonder of surprise and curiosity. The child at this stage
lives in the present moment; there are no doubts or fears to assail her for she
lives in the now, driven on by the impetus of life to take her place in that
In
this New Year we are given a gift, if we choose to see it like this, a New Year,
a blank page to write and act upon, new days to savour and perhaps new ways of
dealing with old problems. Surely there is potential enough in the coming
unfolding days and changing seasons to make this coming year different in so
many ways? One of the great themes of the religious life is to give thanks for
the privilege of life but perhaps the greatest way to honour God, the greatest
way to acknowledge the privilege of living, the days of our life is to live
them more fully, to be awake to the presence of God in the world and to be
awake to our obligations to each other.
And
so we return once again to that subject, the birth of a child, the hopes for
its future, its needs to be loved and protected and its eagerness to discover
the world; to play and to learn and eventually in the passing of years to take
its rightful place as an independent and fully functioning person to fit into
society, into the local community and the wider family of humanity. At the
beginning of life, there is no definite blueprint or a certain road map for any
child, for the child will be he or she that it wants to be, there is no
certainty, we might guess at the future but every child like every moment is
unique; every child, every person.
We
cannot know the future as we look at the prospect of a New Year as it stands
before us. But we should accept it as a great blessing not with foreboding or a
jaded sense of repetition because it is not that it, it is not the repetition of
another year but the continuation of life in its unfolding drama on a cosmic
scale, where all the men and women are actors playing different parts at
different times, we are co-creators with God you could say in our brief lives.
So let us live now with a sense of excitement of pleasure in the lengthening
days and the joys that the remaining winter months will bring, and let us live
in the anticipation of spring and all that will follow in its wake. And let us
remember these words from the poem, The
Gate of the Year by Minnie Louise Haskins:
And I said to the man who stood at the
gate of the year: “Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown.”
And he replied:
“Go out into the darkness and put your
hand into the Hand of God. That shall be to you better than light and safer
than a known way.”
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