A New Year’s Blessing

May God bless us as we wait

with candles and watchnight vigils,
with anxieties and fears, with hopes and plans;
May God bless us as we wait.

There is a season for everything
even this, the end of the world
coming as it does at the end of every year.
The end is nigh; a new heaven and a new earth
waiting in the wings with the New Year.
May God bless us one and all.

May he wipe away our tears,

may their season be passed,
            may they, like the sea they have filled, be no more.

May he say to us who wait,
                “Come, come you who are blessed,
                come into the kingdom prepared for you since the foundation of the world.”
May he welcome us in this New Year.