Where, unwilling, dies the rose,
Buds the new, another year.
(Dorothy Parker)
THERE ARE NONE WHO LIVE IN THIS WORLD WHO DO NOT FEEL FROM TIME TO TIME THAT THEIR ENTHUSIASM HAS DIED. Life is demanding. It is exhausting. Even if we face no more than the ordinary challenges of “homesteading” — providing food, clothing, and shelter — we can get to the point where we feel every drop of vitality has been drained from us, and we let go of our hopes.
A new year can bring new life to us. There is something very special about the first few days of a brand-new year, and we ought to seize this opportunity to get a fresh grip on everything we deal with. The sun is coming up earlier each morning. Spring, while still some distance away, is at least imaginable. New life is calling our names.
A new love can also bring new life to us. By “new love,” we don’t necessarily mean someone or something we’ve never loved before, although new loves of that sort are powerful givers of new life. A “new love” may mean persons or things we have loved before, but we’ve newly discovered how to love them in a better, or deeper, way. Whichever kind of new love is ours, we need to be careful not to let it go to waste. Love, especially when new, is the most potent force we will ever know. It should be appreciated. We should feel its fire and welcome the new world it opens up to us. Sometimes a new love can be so strongly invigorating that we feel as did Christina Georgina Rossetti: “The birthday of my life / Is come, my love is come to me.”
Have your dreams been dead for a while now? How long has it been since hope was yours? Does your phoenix need to rise from its ashes? If so, don’t discount the possibility that it can happen, and don’t dismiss the likelihood that it can happen right now, on the threshold of a new year. As the snows of more than a few winters accumulate on the head of this writer, I feel in many important ways that I’m only just beginning to live. I am thankful to be alive — to have been reborn — and I’m going to give it all I’ve got. Will you join me?
And now in age I bud again,
After so many deaths I live and write;
I once more smell the dew and rain . . .
(George Herbert)
Gary Henry — WordPoints.com + AreYouaChristian.com
