A couple of weeks ago, my family and I were sitting around the table eating our dinner when I remembered a funny story. Okay, it wasn’t funny for the people it happened to (it involved an owl sitting on some beams above a dining room table) but I was already struggling to control my laughter just at the thought of it. By the time I was giving the details, tears were streaming down my cheeks and my story was becoming incomprehensible. In those moments, however, as my eyes connected with the sparkle, mirth and surprise in the eyes of my family, every domestic frustration and all our irritation with one another was washed away. C.S Lewis was onto something when he said that “the sun looks down on nothing half so good as a household laughing together over a meal” (in The Weight of Glory.)
Food and laughter – that’s my first prayer for you on this first day of a brand new year. May you have more than enough of both so that you can spread the joy far and wide with the excess. If you live alone, I pray that you will never lack opportunities to join others or to have people gather around your table.
My second prayer is that your body will be strong and well, your mind will be sound and your spirit will keep in step with God. Keeping in step with the Spirit (Galatians 5 v 25) keeps us on the right track – what comfort as we walk into a new year with all kinds of unknowns. We do not need to know everything, we just need to know and stay close to the One Who does.
Give us eyes to see, ears to hear and a heart that understands so that we can turn and be healed (Matthew 13 v 15.) Sometimes we are asleep even though we are awake, and I pray that 2025 will be a year of being alert and responsive. Where senses have been hurt, numbed and deactivated, I pray for a glorious waking up, like a bear yawning, rubbing his eyes and stretching at the end of a long winter.
May there be an outpouring of creativity and a firing up of imagination. Solutions to problems, wisdom for tricky situations and so much work satisfaction that we all stand amazed.
I pray for friendship, I pray for romantic love, I pray for the opening of wombs where they have been tightly shut.
For all the marriages that are on the verge of breaking, I beg for divine intervention.
For every addiction, I pray for connection, rescue and astounding restoration.
I’m on my knees for the ones who need a breakthrough. I know the One who makes a way where there seems to be no way and I believe that He performs wonders that cannot be fathomed, miracles that cannot be counted. ((Job 5 v 9)
I pray that every one of you will know the Salvation of God. Not just the salvation that places a helmet on our heads in this war we find ourselves in (Ephesians 6 v 17) but the daily saving grace, the endless new mercy, the gift of God (John 4 v 10), the eternal life (John 3 v 16), the greatest of all loves and the brightest of all lights. Yet to all who did receive Him, to those who believed in His name, He gave the right to become children of God (John 1 v 12.)
Oh to be a child! Freedom, lack of responsibility and innocence. Endless play, an expectation that needs will be met and a deep sense of security. I’m always amazed at how often my children point out the moon, stars, clouds and birds to me. They are closer to the earth than I am and yet they notice the happenings in the heavens far more readily than I do. May we live, this year, with childlike faith and wonder – every cynical, age-hardened cell in our bodies continually replaced with trustful anticipation that there are second chances, new beginnings and good times ahead.
In Jesus’ Name,
Amen
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