Happy New Year to my readers. A little late, but still within the acceptable timeframe for such a greeting. I started my post Christmas holiday today (Friday) by driving to Wales for a week on the north West Pembrokeshire coast with my husband.
I haven’t made a new year’s resolution this year. Last year’s was difficult to keep, but I managed it, and am glad I did so. It was to do a drawing every day, even if it was just a few marks on the page. I managed to only miss 15 days through illness, forgetting or neglect – or, towards the end, not wanting to remember! It got difficult but it did improve my sketching ability. So worth doing. This year I will be doing an art journal as part of my prayer time, thus producing something new on a weekly basis, which is much more achievable. But I haven’t decided that it is a new year resolution so if I don’t manage it, I won’t have a sense of failure. I have decided I will focus on poetry this year – but have not set myself any targets to achieve. Nevertheless I have a new notebook to use to jot down ideas.
This evening as I prayed, I used my prayer journal pictures from Advent until now, and they were helpful in guiding my prayers. This week I have been contemplating words from Isaiah 61: Arise, Shine, your light has come. I was reminded of the Graham Kendrick song of that title. We look around the world and see so much darkness, sin and things that are wrong. But God is still God and His light – Jesus – still shines in the darkness of individual people and of nations. I pray that He will shine in my darkness, in the darkness of those I love and in the darkness of the villages I serve, as well as in the world at large. (I have ordered some white pens but they were delivered too late, so I used gold which doesn’t show up as well.). The picture could probably benefit from more work, but….. this is it.
I also wrote a French Pantoum (a form of poem/verse) entitled 2020 – A New Year. It won’t win any prizes. It was written prayerfully and not as an ‘English Literature’ exercise. If it had been my homework to hand in, then I would have given more thought to the lines and order in which I placed them. Anyway – here it is for your delight and edification (I hope).
2020 – A New Year
2020 – a new year – a new decade
Time to start afresh, turn over a new leaf
God’s light shines in the darkness
There is nothing to fear.
Time to start afresh, turn over a new leaf
Your Word is a light to my path
There is nothing to fear.
Another good year awaits.
Your Word is a light to my path
God’s light shines in the darkness
Another good year awaits
2020 – a new year – a new decade.
Why don’t you try writing one?
It is very simple. Think about a topic or subject. And if you are a person who prays then I suggest you pray as you think. Write down 6 phrases that come to mind. They are then arranged in 3 stanzas in the following order:
Stanza 1
Phrase 1
Phrase 2
Phrase 3
Phrase 4
Stanza 2
Phrase 2
Phrase 5
Phrase 4
Phrase 6
Stanza 3
Phrase 5
Phrase 3
Phrase 6
Phrase 1
However, as I looked on Wikipedia I discovered that there are other methods and numbers of stanzas (why am I not surprised?). So follow this link. And the one after it is a Christmas One which I enjoyed.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pantoum
https://www.firstthings.com/article/2015/12/the-christmas-preface
Elizabeth Jones' Diary 
Happy New Year Liz.
As a congregation Emmanuel church is being encouraged to journal and ponder revival. It’s really hard in such fraught times to focus on Emmanuel – God with us.
Politics, climate change, xenophobia, islamaphobia, anti Semitism , it feels like the human world is spiralling out of control, down into a pit. We can only pray that God holds us and shines light into the darkness.
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I share your concerns. It’s good that you are being encouraged to journal along with praying for revival. When we look back in history we can see other times when the world was in a similar state of darkness. I think we are more aware of it now because of the immediacy of news transmission. The ‘darkness’ has always been there – perhaps the we are seeing more of it because the Light IS shining more now than before?????
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Hi. Our evensong sermons for the next few weeks are based on spiritual gifts. The sermon last night was about wisdom. I ididn’t go as I went to theEiphany morning service instead. I agree, the immediacy of news, social media etc makes the darkness more seen. Before the smart phone/internet age people only saw these things via the television or first hand if they occurred in their own communities.
I do think that God is moving. Thing seem to be ramping up, but as you say humanity is cyclical and history repeats itself often.
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Hi Julie. Do you get many at Evensong? And is the church of a charismatic nature? Interesting choice of subject for a sermon series. Important that our churches appreciate the spiritual gifts as being relevant and of use to us today. And that we ask for the ones we need – rather than the ones we want.
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I like your poem very much – being a word lover the structure appeals to me…I may try it sometime. I want to try to do some more art/prayer journalling but I get too worked up and concerned about it being “right” that I forget the primary purpose!
Interesting exchange between you and Julie – I too look at the world and see darkness and fear. Which is why I really need to hang onto those words “Do not fear”! (see abridged sermon!! )
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Hi. Thanks. I will be doing more poems in my blog this year – inspiration permitting. Art/prayer journaling is effective when we do it only for ourselves, initially, and not with any ideal of getting it ‘right’. It is as it is because it is what we are recording of our thoughts and feelings plus insights of/from God at the time. But I do agree it is difficult to let go of the need to be ‘good’ and ‘right’. A big part of the reason I have spent the last year practising drawing and art is so that I can express myself better through art journaling. We will see how this year progresses. I hope you get into it more and that you find it beneficial. God bless x
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