Dutch priest and author Henri Nouwen wrote this prayer – a helpful moment of re-orienting at the start of a new year:
Dear Lord, help me keep my eyes on you. You are beauty, goodness, gentleness, forgiveness, and mercy. In you all can be found. Outside of you nothing can be found. Why should I look elsewhere or go elsewhere? You have the words of eternal life, you are food and drink, you are the Way, the Truth, and the Life. You are the light that shines in the darkness, the lamp on the lampstand, the house on the hilltop.
In a similar way, the English mystic Julian of Norwich prays:
God, of your goodness, give me yourself; you are enough for me, and anything less that I could ask for would not do you full honour. And if I ask anything that is less, I shall always lack something, but in you alone I have everything.
As we head into 2023 may you find that amongst all the activity and concerns of the new year, the secure knowledge that you belong to God is enough.
Dear Lord, help me keep my eyes on you. You are beauty, goodness, gentleness, forgiveness, and mercy. In you all can be found. Outside of you nothing can be found. Why should I look elsewhere or go elsewhere? You have the words of eternal life, you are food and drink, you are the Way, the Truth, and the Life. You are the light that shines in the darkness, the lamp on the lampstand, the house on the hilltop.
In a similar way, the English mystic Julian of Norwich prays:
God, of your goodness, give me yourself; you are enough for me, and anything less that I could ask for would not do you full honour. And if I ask anything that is less, I shall always lack something, but in you alone I have everything.
As we head into 2023 may you find that amongst all the activity and concerns of the new year, the secure knowledge that you belong to God is enough.