dimanche 2 janvier 2005
Happy New Year!
This prayer was in Our Daily Bread on Saturday:
"Father, we surrender this past year and give it up to You. We give You our failures, our regrets, and our disappointments, for we have no more use for them. Make us now a new people, forgetting what lies behind and pressing on toward that which lies ahead of us. We give You all our hopes and dreams for the future. Purify them by Your Spirit so that our wills shall truly reflect Your will for us. As we stand on the threshold of another year, encourage us by our successes of the past, challenge us by the power of Your Word, and guide us by the presence of Your Holy Spirit."
One of the points I got out of the sermon in church today was that we should not dwell so much in the past that the future whittles away. I remember reading in Augustine's Confessions about his philosophy on time, and how he talked about the past and the future not really existing; that time could only be measured in the present.
"Give me leave, O Lord, to seek still further. O my Hope, let not my purpose be confounded. For if there are times past and future, I wish to know where they are. But if I have not yet succeeded in this, I still know that wherever they are, they are not there as future or past, but as present. For if they are there as future, they are there as 'not yet'; if they are there as past, they are there as 'no longer.' Wherever they are and whatever they are they exist therefore only as present."
- Chapter XVIII: 23
May you be able to live in the present in God's love and joy. Best wishes for the year 2005!
