Wednesday evening 11 of us met to pray for the year ahead, and we brought clocks and candles and egg timers and all things to do with time and we ended up with a marvellous array on the altar as we contemplated the last year and looked forward to 2015.
Our liturgy included this prayer by Rev. Christine Battjes.
Helper in our Past and Hope for our Future: hold our good intentions, free us from that which keeps us from the good, and enable us to move into the coming year with your love behind, beside, and before us. Amen.
Our reading was Ecclesiastes 3.1-13 and we each chose a word from the reading that fitted in with our New Year resolution.
For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven:a time to be born, and a time to die;
a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;
a time to kill, and a time to heal;
a time to break down, and a time to build up;
a time to weep, and a time to laugh;
a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
a time to throw away stones, and a time to gather stones together;
a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
a time to seek, and a time to lose;
a time to keep, and a time to throw away;
a time to tear, and a time to sew;
a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
a time to love, and a time to hate;
a time for war, and a time for peace.
I was thinking of choosing ‘dancing’, but it was already taken so I chose ‘throwing away’. I thought this ‘being busy mindset’ would be a very good one to throw away. Especially considering the last couple of verses from the Ecclesiastes reading; so often left off when it is used in a funeral service.
What gain have the workers from their toil? I have seen the business that God has given to everyone to be busy with. He has made everything suitable for its time; moreover, he has put a sense of past and future into their minds, yet they cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end. I know that there is nothing better for them than to be happy and enjoy themselves as long as they live; moreover, it is God’s gift that all should eat and drink and take pleasure in all their toil.
And so we did all go off to eat and drink and take pleasure in our toil after that; off to Niko Niko for a lovely Japanease-Korean New Year’s Eve meal.