"And now we welcome the new year, full of things that have never been."
~Rainer Maria Rilke

The new year has begun! For us it has been born in cool, wet snow, slim birch trees, and the hidden, almost unnoticed scent of woodsmoke that infuses every bit of our lives. I am looking forward, eagerly, to this new year - anticipating the joys that will be new-born each and every day. I was told once that I am able to enjoy life so much because I don't have an expectation that life will unfold in any particular pattern - that I allow it to blossom around me and enjoy the surprise as much as the pattern itself. I appreciated the compliment of this, but I'm not certain it's entirely true. There have been a good many times in my life when I have not been able to enjoy the pattern or the surprise, when my expectations have not been met and the beauty of life seems diminished. When this happens, my saving grace has not been my lack of expectation, but the fluidity of my expectations, in other words: the gift of Hope. I can't help but see in the opening of a new year, all the blessings that have only waited on this particular year to come into being.

Each year that greets us, fresh and young as a child, encourages each of us to see the world around us with childlike wonder and joyful hope - in anticipation of the love God will shower us with, whether that gift of love is the very one we'd longed for, or the love He has planned to make us over more fully in His image.

I hope that this new year unfolds in beauty for each of us!