New Happy Year! Or, if you be from Europe, Good New Year. Or, elsewhere in your own language, Happy New Year! May this be the year your dreams come true.
For many 2016 was a new beginning, for others it had a lousy ending. For most of us it was somewhere in between. It was what it was and 2017 will be what it will be. It is up to us to make of it what we will.
I like to mess with words, take them apart, move them around, look at their roots, look at what they meant originally and try to get a better understanding of what it is we are saying. I want to be conscious of what it is I am hearing and saying.
Saying, “New Happy Year” puts the emphasis on the year being a new happy one. Whereas, “Happy New Year” can be likened to “have a nice day” as January 1 is New Year’s Day, although I do believe most people are referring to the whole year.
We can choose to make this a new happy year. Or, we can choose to make it something else. Just as we choose whether we live in Heaven or Hell. Heaven and Hell are states of mind we choose to participate in.
The word Heaven, in both the Old and New Testaments, comes from words that mean the sky or a lofty place. Whereas Hell, Sheol in the Old Testament, was a place where the dead reside. In the New Testament,
Hell is Gehenna which means the Valley of Hinnon that is just outside of Jerusalem. Gehenna was the dump where trash was burned.
Jesus spoke of these as states of mind that we choose to participate in. Heaven is like a man who sowed good seed, a grain of mustard seed that is planted in a field, leaven that leavens bread, a treasure hidden in a field, a merchant in search of fine pearls, a net thrown into the sea.
Hell is where the negative is transformed by fire.
Fire is a transformative element. It not only cleanses and purifies, it transforms. Garbage is turned into ash which is fertilizer for the new growth.
It can be creative or it can be destructive all depending upon how it is used. The fires of Hell are the pain and agony we experience when we are immersed in our sorrows, when we are asleep to the new growth that is ever present.
Heaven is that lofty perch of a consciousness of God presence that allows us to see beyond the appearances of lack and limitation, pain and suffering, worry and doubt, blame and guilt. From here we see the Divine Order and Divine Timing of absolute good that is outworking in our lives whether we like it or not.
Teilhard de Chardin, a Jesuit priest, once said, “We are not human beings having a spiritual experience, we are spiritual beings having a human experience.” The trouble is we think ourselves only human, subject to the “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” (Hamlet), rather that divine expressions of the One Presence the One Power: God.
God is only good, the word literally means the goodly one. “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” Genesis 1:1.
What was heaven and earth made out of? There was only God, only good. It is all absolute good. We are the ones who choose to call it good or bad, right or wrong, positive or negative; we have been given the power of choice. We have the power to choose Heaven.
So may you invest yourself in practicing the presence of God today and always.
Take the time to be holy; invest your time in prayer and meditation on the divine presence that is within you; choose to express the light and love of God that you are.
Blessings of peace, joy & love. Rev. Matthew E. Long, Peace Unity Community