Un-Happy New Year!

What a greeting! What about a little optimism as we start fresh in 2017!?

I was pondering what to say for the New Year regarding soul growth and gardening. I considered the promise of new flowers in a few weeks as my Amaryllis is budded and ready for the New Year. I enjoy watching my Amaryllis bud and will celebrate the bloom, and then it will fade and die. Short-lived. Done. Beautiful yet fleeting.

I re-read the Christmas cards from friends – and saw the human mixture of joy and sorrow, celebration and loss, the mixture that each of us faces every day, fleeting. And the phrase “Un-Happy New Year” popped into my head.

Of course I wish happiness for each of us, including myself, in the coming year. My strongest wish won’t make that happen. I also wish for just enough sun and clouds, rain and snow, warmth and chill, so that my garden will prosper and flower in 2017. But my strongest wish won’t make that happen.

The New Year is uncertain, just as each day is uncertain. So I want to wish us something deeper, something beyond wishing, something that we can count on and know is true each day of the New Year.

What I want for my soul in 2017, and what I suspect you want too, is a deeper reality, a surer foundation, a hope and a promise that you can count on.

If you are having a happy life, you may not even realize that you need this deeper foundation. But as some point, happiness isn’t enough to carry us through. At some point we need a deeper promise.

So for those moments of 2017 which are far from happy, and for the ones that are full of happiness, I wish you Emmanuel – God with us. For that’s the very best we can hope for, and that promise will last much longer than any flowers which bring beauty into one of our days.

God be with you in 2017. He will. In happiness and unhappiness. In flower and in barrenness. God be with you. Emmanuel.