My New Year's Prayer for You

By Robin G. Jordan

I headed to bed a few minutes short of the stroke of midnight last night. I had not fallen asleep when the New Year arrived in Murray, Kentucky. My neighborhood was strangely quiet. No firecrackers. No bottle rockets. Nothing like how my neighbors have celebrated the arrival of the New Year in years past—particularly my neighbors on the next street.

Kentucky has a lot of unemployment. This may explain the lack of revelry at the arrival of the New Year. For many people their prospects do not look any better in 2014 than they were in 2013.

I suspect that most of my neighbors had gone to bed like myself.

The one exception was my neighbor in the house next door. He and his wife are Muslim. He comes and goes all hours of the night. We have a mosque in Murray and the local Muslim community observes formal prayers five times each day—Fajr (pre-dawn), Dhuhr (noon), 'Asr (afternoon), Maghrib (sunset), and 'Isha (evening). The more devote may perform the Tahajjud, or Salatul Layl—the late night prayer.

Earlier in the evening I heard what sounded like the thud of mortar fire in the subdivision across the highway from my neighborhood. It was a reminder that violence and bloodshed marked the arrival of the New Year elsewhere in the world.

In reflecting upon the New Year, I do not believe that 2014 will differ from previous years. Whatever happens here in the United States and in other parts of the world, people are going to need Jesus Christ. If we are Christians, we have a mission. We are called to live and share the good news of Jesus Christ. Those who believe we are called to disciple.

For Anglicans Ablaze readers, for all Christians, for all in whom God is working to make them able and willing to obey his purposes, my prayer is that God fill this new year with many opportunities to do so. Having been blessed with the salvation that alone comes from God, may God use you mightily to bestow that blessing upon others. May the fullness of God’s grace be with you and your loved ones in the New Year. May God's peace, the perfect peace that passes all understanding, be with you.