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I want to make this new year as good as it can be. I don’t want to put my focus on what’s missing and what’s broken. I want to make some positive choices. I want to do my part to make things better. I want to let my light shine. I want to live in gratitude.
I love what artist and author, Jan Richardson, wrote in her book of blessings “Circle of Grace” in what she titles “Blessing When the World Is Ending:”
“[This blessing] is here simply because there is nothing a blessing is better suited for than an ending, nothing that cries out more for a blessing than when a world is falling apart.
“This blessing will not fix you, will not mend you, will not give you false comfort; it will not talk to you about one door opening when another one closes.
“It will simply sit itself beside you among the shards and gently turn your face toward the direction from which the light will come, gathering itself about you as the world begins again.”
I want to concentrate on letting my light shine, adding light to the world in whatever ways I can.
This message is excerpted from “Make the new year as good as it can be” by Sonia Solomonson from the January 11, 2021, blog of the Women of the ELCA. Today we commemorate Johann Konrad Wilhelm Loehe, renewer of the church, 1872.