“Nothing is constant but change,” says the philosopher, and we might as well add, “…changing ever faster.” Wherever we look today the world is changing and at an unprecedented rate.
Much of that change is alarming, but there is also some good news, such as for our prison system. In my home state of New York, the state prison population in the last 25 years has been reduced from 70,000 in the late 1990s to around 30,000 today.
One of the evening psalms among today’s lectionary readings is Psalm 8, which includes some of the most wondrous words in the Bible:
3 When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars that you have established;
4 what are human beings that you are mindful of them,
mortals that you care for them?
5 Yet you have made them a little lower than God,
and crowned them with glory and honor.
Watch Night recalls the hopeful waiting for Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation to take effect in 1862, and today’s continued quest for racial justice.
Happy New Year, everybody! Or, as we sing along with José Feliciano in “Feliz Navidad,” his 50-year holiday hit: “Próspero año y Felicidad” (A prosperous and happy new year).
As a new year begins for the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), synod and presbytery leaders share their resolutions for the church. Among those resolutions are challenging congregations to do something radically new without worrying about failure, lifting voices often ignored and widening the witness of being a Matthew 25 presence in the world.
