It is a new year, or I suppose it should be written New Year, but capital letters or not it is very much a new year. Two thousand and fourteen, twenty-fourteen, 2014, no matter how I write it, it just seems weird. I’m not sure why 2014 seems weird in a way that 2013 didn’t but there is nothing to say for the vagaries of the human mind, especially mine.
The main idea behind today’s sermons was the notion of the new year as a gift, a present (I didn’t develop the play on words with present=gift and present=now as much as I might have but there is always next year). As I mentioned in both services, as I get older I find myself taking things like years less for granted than I used to. Not in a strange, “Hey! The world didn’t end and I didn’t die in my sleep! Wow!” kind of way but just in a more sedate . . . “a new year, cool” . . . kind of way. This way of looking at the new year led me to see it as a gift that we all get. A gift for all of us that is both the same and completely different for each of us.
The other gift we looked at was the gift of Jesus Christ. I know that Jesus Christ as a gift is nothing new but it struck me that one of the aspects I hadn’t explored how Christ’s humanity enables him (all the Trinity of course) to not just know what we are going through but to also understand what we are going through whether what we are experiencing is good or bad.
Knox Presbyterian What kind of a present did we get?
St. Mark’s Presbyterian What kind of a present did we get?
I pray that for all of you this year is indeed the best year yet and the beginning of no lack of good and great things.
Blessings,
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