What does the New Year hold?

The new calendar holds many blank pages.  I have hopes for several projects (and, actually, I shall want your help on a couple of them!)  However, this past year of cancer checks and a broken foot has rammed home the truth, so often neglected, that as finite human beings we just do not know what lies ahead, do we?   Yes, we make plans, and we need to, yet the big road trip is dependent on many factors outside our control but not God's.

I have chosen this prayer of Thomas Merton for the preface of a workbook I am writing to encourage preachers to join the Chicago NKP initiative (see earlier postings).   I like its humility and openness and I think it works quite well for beginning 2015.

My Lord God,
I have no idea where I am going.

I do not see the road ahead of me.

I cannot know for certain where it will end

Nor do I really know myself

and the fact that I think I am following

your will does not mean

that I am actually doing so.

But I believe that my desire to please you

does in fact please you.

And I hope that I have that desire
in all that I am doing.

I hope I will never do anything

apart from that desire

And I know that if I do this

you will lead me by the right road.
 
In the many uncertainties ahead may we seek to do what God desires in 2015.  All good wishes for a fulfilling year ahead!