My Fav Books

  • A Bend in the River by VS Naipaul
  • All the Names - José Saramago
  • An untamed state by Roxanne Gay
  • Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
  • Cujo by Stephen King
  • Efuru by Flora Nwapa
  • It by Stephen King
  • Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
  • Lasher by Ann Rice
  • Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie
  • Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Petals of Blood
  • One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez
  • Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
  • So Long a letter by Mariama Ba
  • The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born by Ayi Kwei Arma
  • The Dark Tower (all 6) by Stephen King
  • The Joys of Motherhood by Buchi Emecheta
  • The Queen of the Damned by Anne Rice
  • The Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon
  • Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
  • Tick Tock by Dean Koontz

Sunday, December 31, 2017

Prayer for the New Year

Dear God,

May my life be of use to You this year.
May my talents and intelligence 
help heal the world.
May I remember how much I have
by remembering how much I have to give.
May I not be tempted by smaller things
but serve my larger mission of forgiveness and love.
Thus shall I be lifted, God,
and know joy this coming year and beyond.
Bless me and work through me 
to bless the entire world.
Amen

Poem: New Year



A New Year

So there I stood, on this piece of land, a new year stretched out before me, galloping fast and full. Could God's love really transform the landscape of my heart and seep into the ground here? Could love stop me in my tracks, could it hijack the dates and times and allow me to breathe in the new? I felt both the warmth of shelter and the distant chill of harsher weather. Could this man Jesus really stand between me and this incoming storm? Or become part of my intimate family treasure? How I look and wonder at the flaming colours of dawn, a dawn that breaks again and again across the face of a broken world. Can this unconditional love really cradle such a discordant and desperate globe in saving hands?

Yet at this moment, I feel the depth of ground beneath me. I stand upon words of truth, the book of life. And as I allow the Gospels, tales of Jesus of Nazareth to come alive in my mind they awaken my heart. If love really did overcome when Christ died on the cross, this piece of land is redeemed, restored and forgiven. Yes!! I can walk forward with a peaceful heart. And I do hold in my hands a piece of that land, a fragment of that legacy. Faith leaps in my heart, order reigns in my mind and hope grows in my spirit. A new year, new beginnings and new dreams, can all be made possible through God's transforming love.

"A New Year" - a prayer poem, copyright © 2014 Julie Palmer