New year uncertainty

We stand on the edge of another year. Some may be glad this one is nearly over. It’s been a hard one for many of us with things happening to us we did not expect and a journey we had to take that was not very happy. 

The road into 2019 lies ahead of us. We travel on it expectantly. For me the early part of the year will bring continued uncertainty with health and well being not as yet bringing much peace. I had longed to return to work this week. That is looking highly unlikely and I’m having to be told I’m nowhere near strong enough. I feel I’m letting so many people down and I’m just very sorry that others are having to do so much because I’m not doing what I’m meant to be doing. 

We place ourselves at the turn of the year into the God who goes ahead of us. I don’t know what 2019 will hold. I’m quite scared to enter it. But we journey slowly, honestly and in quiet confidence that there is nothing we will face we cannot with the divine carrying us not get through. God’s time is not ours. Someone said to me the other day perhaps what I’m enduring at the moment is a sign. I’m not sure what it is a sign of yet! I plod on taking a breathless day at a time. And I look for God every day in something small and count my blessings. 

The world is uncertain tonight and the place of the believer in hope and in light is to be amongst that uncertainty. The Celtic Daily Prayer book for today has this lovely thought. We need to be here to help the world cope with what it cannot understand. Be that sudden illness or Brexit or migrants frightened in the Channel. 

Happy 2019 everyone. I hope and pray we will find peace and joy in it. Or if not, the courage to hold on. I shall be thinking of Thomas Merton’s words as the clock strikes midnight later. They are a comfort as I have far too little answers to my questions. 

My Lord God, 

I have no idea where I am going. 

I do not see the road ahead of me.

I cannot know for certain where it will end. 

Nor do I really know myself, 

and the fact that I think that I am following 

your will does not mean that I am actually doing so.

But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. 

And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. 

I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. 

And I know that if I do this, you will lead me by the right road though I may know nothing about it.

Therefore will I trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, 

and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.