A New Year's Tradition!

Dear Faith Family,  

Today is the first day of the new year. And so it is time to turn the calendar for 2023 is officially here!

And yet, as is often the case, the calendar's turning is no guarantee that change is coming or for good. Indeed, many wondrous and beautiful things in the year behind us were worth celebrating and praising. Still, we cannot deny that there has also been loss, sickness, strife, and all the ills plaguing our human condition. I suspect the same can be said for many past years and will be repeated in years ahead.

So what are we to do? As our brother Peter reminded us in his second letter, rather than judge the past and predict the future by the tally of wins and losses, we are to be caught up in "a living hope."  We are to live as ones who "count the patience of our Father as salvation," living "at peace" amind the mixture of praises and laments—knowing that at the turn of each year, of each day truly, we awake afresh into the certainty of sin and death's final days. So, with confident hope, we can ring out the old that is passing away and ring in the new that will be forever. 

And so, that is what we will do, ring out the old and ring in the new! And will do so through what has become a tradition for our faith family, praying together this poem by Alfred Lord Tennyson. A poem that can be prayed over and over until the new that is Christ in us, through us, and for us and neighbor is all that is left. 

Love you, faith family! Happy New Year and God bless. 

In Memoriam CVI | Alfred Lord Tennyson

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky, 
The flying cloud, the frosty light:
The year is dying in the night; 
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die. 

Ring out the old, ring in the new, 
Ring, happy bells, across the snow: 
The year is going, let him go; 
Ring out the false, ring in the true. 

Ring out the grief that saps the mind
For those that here we see no more; 
Ring out the feud of rich and poor, 
Ring in redress to all mankind. 

Ring out a slowly dying cause, 
And ancient forms of party strife; 
Ring in the nobler modes of life, 
With sweeter manners, purer laws. 

Ring out the want, the care, the sin,
The faithless coldness of the times; 
Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes 
But ring the fuller minstrel in. 

Ring out false pride in place and blood, 
The civic slander and the spite; 
Ring in the love of truth and right, 
Ring in the common love of good. 

Ring out old shapes of foul disease; 
Ring out the narrowing lust of gold; 
Ring out the thousand wars of old; 
Ring in the thousand years of peace. 

Ring in the valiant man and free, 
The larger heart, the kindlier hand; 
Ring out the darkness of the land, 
Ring in the Christ that is to be.