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