While closing the bound pages of 2023 and looking to the virginal pages of 2024 fluttering on the horizon (as yet unwritten and unbound), perhaps, one has to wonder . . . what is ahead?
Remember, it is still the season of Christmas as we welcome the first pages of the New Year, and Light, even in the darkest skies, or perhaps, the most uninspired text, still shines.
So, for those experiencing the slightest wisp of reticence, miracles still happen and there are good things ahead. Apprehension is just one of a myriad of human emotions that add to the seasoning along the way.
In the middle of the journey of our life/
I found myself astray in a dark woods/
Where the straight road had been lost sight of./—Seamus Heaney translation of Dante’s Inferno, Canto I
And yet, hope abounds with the possibility of life refreshed.
The sages have a hundred maps to give/
That trace their crawling cosmos like a tree,/
They rattle reason out through many a sieve/
That stores the sand and lets the gold go free:/
And all these things are less than dust to me/
Because my name is Lazarus and I live./—G.K. Chesterton, “The Convert”
That we live. That we persevere. That we know in our hearts the love of God is greater than any darkness. Even the hard times will bring blessing. When the ink runs dry, the waters of grief deluge in tears, the loneliness seems the soul’s sole companion….
There is goodness ahead. And yes, joy.
The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it.
—John 1:5
A blessed New Year to all.
Thanks for stopping by. ♥