The turning of the calendar from one year to the next always seems to me to be the most slender of reasons for celebration. Surely it is no more hopeful than the beginning of every new day?
Why in the world would the changing of a single digit in a date inspire hope for tired world weary of conflict, sorrow and loss. And yet it does. People go out and celebrate and so will I because, at the very least, I believe the love of God is new every morning, so I might as well celebrate this night at midnight as much as any other. (Except I usually celebrate on waking instead of staying up to midnight, what was it that Danish theologian (Kierkegaard) said? Something along the lines of before I even remember to turn to God on waking, I find that God is fully delighted to see me – can’t find the quote exactly. Or as Psalm 139 reminds us
In the last week two poems have summarised my reasons for hope, they contradict each other in such very helpful ways.
Here is the first:
The Peace of Wild Things
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake up in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and th great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of the wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above the day blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and I am free.
By Wendell Berry
I love the line about not ‘taxing our lives with forethought of grief‘ – in other words live in the blessings of today. Don’t spoil the gift of this moment, this experience, relationship, opportunity by fretting about the ‘what if’ worries of an uncertain future. Jesus said the same ‘Consider the birds of the air, they sow not neither do they reap, yet your heavenly Father feeds them’. The still waters remind me of Psalm 23 and the ‘day-blind stars’ remind me that light and guidance IS always present, and that actually being in the dark can make it easier to find your way. Of course the light of day is better, but even in the dark there is the promise of light.
This poem might appear to be encouraging the worship of Nature. I don’t think so. I think it’s more about learning from Nature.
Why we shouldn’t worship nature is made clearer in this second poem by George Herbert. This poem also offers a rationale for our restlessness, a reason why life is not perfect and points us back to the presence of our Creator who waits to embrace us.
The Pulley
When God at first made man,
Live Life Loved 
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