I begin this new year officiating next to Al Stout, the wedding of his daughter, Alice. What a delightful way to see the Gospel manifested!
This is the eighth day of Christmas, the beginning of my eighth year of the pastorate, and so appropriately, it is a day of new beginnings. New beginnings function as a kind of liturgical reset button. Of course, there are habits, desires, dreams involved in new beginnings, but all these need to be placed in the hands of One who can shape and reshape these. God establishes the times and the seasons as the great Liturgical leader of the assembly.
Apart from the God of new beginnings, life is not worth living. Our attempts at productivity, our forceful efforts to liturgize our lives in our likeness will come to a pitiful end. And so once more, I trust, by the goodness of God, to place my cares on Him. For, in the end, our hopes lie in the One, who unites us to himself as a faithful Bridegroom. Happy new year, dear friends! May the smile of the Holy Trinity be upon you and may your joy be found in him in 2016!
“I have held many things in my hands, and I have lost them all; but whatever I have placed in God’s hands, that I still possess.”-Martin Luther
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