Welcome to the year 2020! We picture the old year as a tired, long-bearded figure shuffling off into the distance and the incoming year as a sash-draped baby energetically stepping onto the stage of life. How are you feeling about the New Year?
I almost hesitate to ask that question, given the national and international news happening around us: Washington torn asunder with impeachment hearings. America split into red & blue states overlaid with impending primary Presidential election contests. Environmental concerns, migration and refugee issues, and the unavoidable fact that a new year fundamentally means we’re all a year older. Even the small articles in the newspaper furrow our brows and cause us to shake our heads in disbelief. For example, the county in the United States with the highest likelihood of having your personal income tax returns audited happens to be Humphreys County, Mississippi—where the median annual income is only $26,000. Because of the poverty of this county and its reliance on federal assistance, you are more than 50% likelier to be audited there than if you live in Loudoun County, Virginia, where the median income is $130,000 (the highest in the country). Something seems profoundly unjust and unfaithful in this treatment of our poorest fellow citizens.
While there is much that rightly causes us to fret and worry, I hope you are able to hold onto some of the anticipation and joy that comes with a New Year’s fresh beginning. Think of your journey into 2020 as a Faith Pilgrimage. Imagine turning over the calendar to January as the marker for the initial steps in a new chapter of your faith life.
Timothy Egan recently completed a pilgrimage that travels from the oldest English-speaking church in the world to the capital city of Rome, Italy. Egan started at a small stone and brick church in Canterbury, England, where a plaque outside the entrance could well be our motto for a 2020 pilgrimage. It said, “We do not have all the answers. We are on a spiritual journey.” As Egan traveled across Europe, he visited locations long associated with pilgrims of ages past and found himself opening up to this universal human quest to connect with God as we travel our various life paths. His busy, modern, Western mind found moments to be still, to slow down and reflect on the wonder that is part of the adventure of each waking day. He took to heart instruction from Pope Francis, who challenged pilgrims (both Catholic and Presbyterian) to trust that God is near every step of our journey. Pope Francis would have us consider these basic questions: “Do you allow yourself to be amazed today? Do you let yourself be surprised?”
In a few weeks I will begin my pilgrimage-sabbatical journey in Spain, resting and reading and considering Francis’ questions. I invite you also to see the New Year as an opportunity for fresh insights about the God who amazes us and the Savior/Holy Spirit who loves to surprise us as we trust in the Lord and journey by faith toward the future. See you soon!
—Randy Bush