The ending of a year and the beginning of a New Year always invites some reflection. While many will make resolutions for the New Year, it is also a time to
review where one has been and where one is going. It can become a time to ponder what has brought hope to us over the past year and to review the foundational principles by which we are living our lives.

In this spirit, I offer the following New Year’s Meditation to you. The questions come from Joyce Rupp’s book “Out of the Ordinary: Prayers, Poems, and Reflections for Every Season.

As you look back on the year just completed:
1. What name would you give to your journey of the past year? How would you describe it to one of your friends? What image or metaphor would
you use to talk about it?
2. What were some of your “epiphanies” of the past year (your discoveries of the Holy One in your midst)? How did you grow because of them?
3. Who were your wise persons? What did they reveal to you? How did this influence your life?
4. Did any of your hopes and dreams become a reality?
5. What was most satisfying about the year? What was least satisfying?
6. How did your experience of the past year affect the world in which you live?

As you look to the year before you:
1. What name would you like your new year’s journey to have? What gifts do you bring with you into the year before you?
2. Do you find any resistance within you? Of what are you most afraid as you enter a new year?
3. What is your greatest need for the coming year?
4. Who do you bring with you for your support and strength as you begin to journey through the year?
5. How is your relationship with the Holy One as you pause on the threshold of the new year’s vast landscape? What is at the heart of your new
year’s prayer
6. What do you hope to contribute to society in this coming year?

Pastor David