A Psalm for New Year’s Day

Photo by Sergei Cherkashin

New Year’s is a holy day when we celebrate the gift of time, the primeval gift, the majestic gift from the Most High.

We enter into this day with praise for the miracles that have been granted us in the past year—for the three hundred and sixty-five daybreaks, for the brilliant noons and the lavender twilights, for the joys and loves that have budded and bloomed, for the understanding we have gained from the sorrows.

We are filled with awe, on this holy day, to know that we shall be given yet more time, more moments to live with heart beating and mind pulsing in the moving now.

We resolve to use these hours and days truly as a gift from the Most High, to live in tenderness and humility, seeking for the sense of God’s presence in the glory of His universe.

At this turning of time, on this New Year’s Day, we pray that the madness and the anger of people* may be abated, that God’s law of love may rule the nations, that the world may find peace.

(from the January 1, 1968 issue)

*”men” in the original text