Wednesday, January 1, 2020

New Year 2020, Everything You Do

Holy Nights
John 1: 1-18 (translation by Craig Wiggins)

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was a God.

This was in the beginning with God.

Everything came into being through the Word, and without it was not anything made that was made.

In the Word was life, and the life was the light of humankind.

And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

There was a man sent from God whose name was John.

He came as a witness, to bear witness to the light, so that through him all may find faith. He was not the light, but a witness to the light, for the true light that enlightens every human being was coming into the world. It was in the world, and the world came into being through it, but the world had not recognized it.

Into those who had recognized it the light had come, but those individuals did not take it in. But all who did take it in received authority to become children of God. Those who trusted in its name are born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of the human beings, but are born of God.

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among (in) us.

And we beheld its revelation, the revelation of the only begotten son of the Father, full of grace and truth.

John bore witness to Him and cried out, saying, “This was he of whom I said, ‘After me comes one who was before me, for he is the very first’.” For out of his fullness, we have received grace upon grace. For the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth have come about through Jesus Christ.

Until now human senses never beheld God. The only begotten Son, who was within the Father, has become the guide to this beholding.


January 1, 2020
John 1: 1-18

In the beginning, God created a living radiance. This radiance took form in sun moon and stars. In the beginning, God created the human being, giving us eyes with which to see the light.

In the beginning, God shepherded us with the Law, with specific codes of conduct, designed to mold and shape our souls and spirits rightly toward God and toward our fellow human beings.

He Qi
And then He began again. He sent His beloved Son, whose very essence and being is Love. Seeing God’s Son, the way He talked, the way He healed, the way His actions were connected back to His Father, human beings can also experience the light, the life, the love of the Father Himself. Through the Son, we are given eyes of the soul, opened by love, with which to see God.

Seeing the Son is grace; taking His essence into our hearts lets us experience the truth of our own being: that love in us is a living, radiant creative force. In the words of Hafiz,

Now is the time to understand
That all your ideas of right and wrong
Were just a child’s training wheels
To be laid aside
When you can finally live
with veracity and love.
Now is the time for the world to know
That every thought and action is sacred.
That this is the time
For you to compute the impossibility
that there is anything
But Grace.
Now is the season to know
That everything you do
Is Sacred.*





*Hafiz, “Now is the Time”, in The Gift, versions of Hafiz, by Daniel Ladinsky

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