The Rector is in Pennsylvania for our annual Christmas trip to see all the grandparents and some of the extended family. Because of the timing of Christmas and the holiday travel this year, I have not gotten a chance to sit down and write a Rambling this week, but I think this post in 2014 is applicable if you change the dates. Like the turn from 2013 to 2014, this is a New Year with a lot of hope and a fair amount of concern attached to it. Each of us is called to behave a certain way; to respond to the world around us; to answer God’s call. It’s a timeless message and one we can always stand to hear.
See you next year!
Tom+
Growing up in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, our New Year’s Day meal was always pork and sauerkraut. I think it’s a German thing. There are a lot of German-descended folks in Lancaster, plus my mother’s father’s family was German, so we had the tradition passed down in our own family. I was a little nervous as to whether I was going to get my annual meal this year, as we were planning to drive back home to Saint Simons on New Year’s Day, after a few days in Lancaster with our families for some post-Christmas celebrations. Pork and sauerkraut is good luck on New Year’s Day – you just have to eat it. We found out that the local volunteer fire company down the road from my in-laws as hosting a pork and sauerkraut lunch, so we went there before we left for our 12-hour drive home.
We went to the fire hall with Donna’s parents and her sister’s family, so that there were ten of us sitting down to eat. The tables only sat eight, so my brother-in-law (the other outlaw) and I sat at another table. We ended up sharing the table with an Amish family. On one hand, having grown up around the Amish and working with them in my years at UPS, it’s no big deal. Still, it was an unexpected surprise, as 90% of the people eating lunch at that time were “English” like me. We enjoyed chatting over our meal, discussing where we lived and their experiences of Georgia (passing through on the way to Florida)
after they learned where I was from. We even had a little theological conversation around God’s call to serve – the elder of the family asked if I found it difficult, like Jonah, to go where God called me, and would I find it difficult to serve in an inner city, if that’s where God called me. I offered that yes, it would be difficult to serve in some places, but not necessarily for the same reasons as Jonah (he didn’t like the people he was called to preach to).
And for all that I am normalized to the Amish in Lancaster County, I have to say that in retrospect, that conversation over pork and sauerkraut was an unexpected surprise at the start of a New Year, barely 12 hours old. Talking about God’s calling with an Amish farmer? I wouldn’t have predicted that in a hundred years. But this is the wonder of a New Year. When it comes down to it, anything is possible. And for many of us, we have big plans for 2014 – or at least big hopes for 2014.
I have been surprised by my Facebook friends this New Year’s, too. Specifically, how many of them wrote something to the effect of how glad they were 2013 was over and their hopes that 2014 would be better. Apparently a fair number of people that I know had a rough go of it this past year. And they’re not alone. I read in the paper how a majority of folks hope that 2014 will be better than 2013. I think most people want each year to be better than the last, even if the most recent year was already pretty good. But the truth is that a lot of people do have a hard time, and simply want things to get a little easier. And why not use a relatively random dividing line as a calendar page turn to ground those hopes? I give thanks to God that my 2013 was a good year, as subjective as that may be.
I know that some of you had a difficult year and some of you had a good year. I don’t really know what your hopes and dreams are for this year, but I’ll be praying for their fulfillment according to God’s purposes. None of us knows what this New Year will hold for us, yet God is calling us forward nonetheless. We may not all have an opportunity to reflect on that calling with an Amish man over sauerkraut, but my guess is that God will find another way to get your attention if you’re open to it. For some reason, my year has started out with a reflection on reluctance to answer God’s call in some form or another. I’m going to keep thinking about it. What is God asking you to reflect on?
Whether it turns out to be good or bad, whether we enter into it openly or reluctantly, 2014 and all it holds is unfolding around us already. My prayer is that all of us find some measure of “goodness” in 2014 when we look back on it next January. I feel pretty good about my year since I got that sauerkraut at the start of it. There’s still time to get yours – I think there’s a several day grace period…
Tom+
Most gracious and merciful God, you have reconciled us to yourself through Jesus Christ your Son, and called us to new life in him: Grant that we, who begin this year in his Name, may complete it to his honor and glory; who lives and reigns now and for ever. Amen.