It Comes to Us All (Ben Harper and the Blind Boys of Alabama)

 "Beauty that
we left behind
how shall we
tomorrow find

Set aside
our weight in sin
so that we
can live again"  -Ben Harper

Hopeful. Tired. Expectant. Regretful. Anxious. Suffering. Celebrating. Sorrowing. We stand on the threshold. Whatever the journey of the last year entailed for us, however we come to it, tonight we will step across, out of the old year and into the new.

Some of us will mark this passing in the company of friends and family, some in huge celebratory crowds, life’s demands will cause others to mark the occasion while at work, or in hospitals and still others will pass the night in church. Regardless of where we are tonight, whether we limp, crawl, run or skip into it, the New Year will come to us all. We will together meet it at 12:00 AM.

As we do at the dawning of each new year, we turn toward possibility, we breathe deeply of hope and remember that the baby of the manger came to make all things new, that what is lost may be found again, what is broken may be repaired, that the world can be changed.

But most of all today, at AMP we want to remember that we walk into the New Year together. This is a great hope. For within one another lie innumerable possibilities-- for support, companionship, solidarity, tenacity, creativity to heal our hearts, hold us up, pull us forward, feed our hungers, and transform us and the world in which we live.  The divine gift of possibility, of hope, dwells richly in us when we are community.

full lyrics here. 

Today’s music selection sings through moments of struggle and fatigue, of wondering about the future, of hopefulness and rebirth;  all of them hemmed in by choruses that speak of reaching out in faith and that assert “I shall not walk alone.”  As we end this season of the Advent Music Project, this is the message that we hope carries us through in the New Year: we do not walk alone.

The New Year meets us all together, may we know in our selves the power of that together-ness as we walk into this next year.   

May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. -Romans 15:13

Thank you for journeying with us through Advent and peace to you in the coming year.               

-Anna and Lindsey