A new rhythm for the new year
One of the gifts I received for Christmas was a calendar to hang in my kitchen, where I have hung calendars for as long as I can remember. This calendar contains lovely art and memorable quotes, the one for January grabbing my attention immediately: “And now we welcome the New Year, full of things that have never been.” These words of German poet Rainer Maria Rilke strike me as being both hopeful and challenging, reminding us of the clean slate that is ours as we step into a New year, but also calling attention to the uncertainty surrounding the unfolding of each new day. How will we approach the gift of yet another year? What if the things that have never been are worse than the things that have already been? Where will we find help and hope in the midst of uncertain times?
For years I thought that what I needed to do in order to cope with the challenges and uncertainty of daily life was to find balance, making sure that no one thing or person or task or responsibility consumed all of me, but if you have ever tried to balance standing on one leg for any length of time, or attempted to perform on a balance beam, you know just how challenging that can be. There’s a reason why performing on a balance beam is an Olympic sport! Then someone suggested to me that rather than trying to find balance in my life, perhaps I should seek to find a rhythm that worked for me, because rhythms are fluid and allow us to alter our course as the circumstances of our lives change.
Clearly, there are similarities between finding balance and finding a rhythm for our lives, but for me, the idea of a rhythm seems more in tune with what is described in the pages of Scripture. Ecclesiastes 3 reminds us “For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven . . .” Just as there is a rhythm in nature that brings about the changing of the seasons, so to in our lives. Sometimes we laugh, sometimes we cry. We love, we hate, we mourn, we dance, we speak, we remain silent, we gather things together, we throw things away . . . We don’t balance these things — we experience them, moving from one to the next, sometimes in a rhythm that is syncopated and fast paced, at other times in a rhythm that includes whole notes and rests that allow us to catch our breath and regroup.
I hear rhythm in the words of the prophet Isaiah when he describes what is in store for those who dare to wait for the LORD: they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not grow weary, they shall walk and not faint. (Isaiah 40:31) Walking, running and mounting up with wings like eagles are all part of the rhythm of life for those who choose to place their hope and trust in God. In the Gospel of Matthew, we find Jesus urging those who are weary and carrying heavy burdens to come to him to find rest. (Matthew 11:2830) When the burdens we carry are weighty and impossible to balance, we are offered a “yoke that is easy and a burden that is light.” Eugene Peterson, in his paraphrase of this passage, has Jesus inviting us to “walk with me and work with me watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace.”
While not a one of us knows what 2018 will hold, our faith assures us is that God holds 2018. There will be good days and bad, ups and downs, joys and sorrows, reason to hope and reason to despair, but our challenge will be to hold on to the rhythm that enables us to navigate the uncharted waters of the New Year with a peace that passes all understanding. Let us invite God to help us find that unforced, life-giving rhythm of grace, one day at a time.