For a Happy and Happier New Year...How About Love?

"Five-hundred twenty-five thousand, six-hundred minutes…. Five hundred twenty-five thousand moments so dear….how do you measure, measure a year?”         

 --“Seasons of Love” from “Rent” by Jonathon Larson, 1996

In the end, in the beginning, it is all about love. Love. It will be all about love, too.  At least that’s what I believe as each of us, as our world, stands on the edge of an old year about to exit and a new year about to enter. 

Love. If we know it, if we practice it, we will be saved. If we ignore it, if we reject it, we are doomed in a way, as children of God and as God’s world too.  The cliché is true—love is the answer. Love marks the best year of all.  

I mean there are many other things, of course, I could use to measure a year, to fixate on it, in these final hours of 2023.  Things I could use to quantify the past 365 days. Like coffee. I probably drank something like 800 cups this year, probably more. Some good and smoky and dark, and some not so good, tepid, weak, brown hot water. Some were solo as I looked out the bay window in my house and watched an orange sun rise above the horizon at dawn. Some cups came in very good company, with an old friend at a downtown coffee shop, or in a church basement at a 12-step meeting. 

I could take a pretty typical way of measuring a year, the way our society often uses to measure whether or not we are “successful.” How much money did I make, starting last January 1^st up until now? Cash. Loot. Mammon, to use an old-fashioned bible term.  According to some that is the ultimate measure of my worth,  as a human, as a worker, as a cog in the machine of the economy. The more money I make the better I am and the less I make the lesser I am.  God help me if I live, or die based upon my 2023 W-2. 

How about Amazon? That could tell me about how I lived this year, using consumption as my yearly yardstick. You know, he who dies with the most toys wins. Right?  As of today I placed ninety-two Amazon orders in the past fifty-two weeks.  My first was “The Farmer’s Almanac 2023 Edition” on January 3^rd, along with a carton of thirty Swiss Miss Hot Chocolate packets.  My final order of this year was for a Bose Bluetooth speaker.  Not sure what these purchases say about me. I have a sweet tooth? I love music? I’m a weather freak? Yes and yes and yes. But that is not the whole of me. Is Amazon you? Are we ultimately what we buy, what material things we collect in a year? I sure hope not.

So many ways to analyze one year. How about Spotify? The song I listened to more than any other in 2023 was “Movin‘ Right Along” by Kermit the Frog and Fozzy Bear.  Ok, so I’m not some music aficionado but I like what I hear and I smiled a lot to that song. There was the miles I rode on my bike—something like 600 or so. The miles I put on my car—in the neighborhood of 13,000.  The miles I put on my body.  It’s about time for me to get another new hip.  I think I’ll wait until next year.

How about prayer to mark one year? How many times did I pray? “God grant me the serenity…” or “Our Father….” or just plain old, “God please help me with…” I know I prayed an awful lot and know I wish I’d prayed even more. Just because I am a paid Christian, in a way, doesn’t make me a better pray-er than other folks.

I think that “Seasons of Love” gets it right when it makes its claim for the best way to measure a year, and moments so dear, 525,600 minutes. It proclaims, “How about love? Love. LOVE?! Seasons of love!”  Moments of love were me at my best last year and will certainly be the best of me in 2024.  The best of all of us as humans and citizens and neighbors and family folk and friends too.  As I leave this year and get ready to enter a new year, I hope I can resolve to ask God to help me to love more in 2024. Love my loveable acquaintances, yes, but also love folks it is hard to love. Love others, absolutely, but also love myself.  Love this world and seek to heal it to of so much hurt and pain. Jesus got it right when he condensed the whole collection religious laws to just three items.

Love God. Love neighbor. Love self.

I can always use more love and God knows Creation needs so much love, maybe now more than ever.  God’s love that can actually end war and cease poverty and stop us boneheaded, stubborn humans from hurting and hating each other.  Of that, I am sure.  I have to have that hope to move into what feels like a very fraught 2024.

How about love? 2024—bring it on. Bring it on, in love. All 525,600 minutes of it.

The Reverend John F. Hudson is Senior Pastor of the Pilgrim Church, United Church of Christ, in Sherborn, Massachusetts (pilgrimsherborn.org). He blogs at sherbornpastor.blogspot.com and is a resident scholar at the Collegeville Institute at Saint John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota. For twenty-five years he was a columnist whose essays appeared in newspapers throughout Massachusetts and Rhode Island. He has served churches in New England since 1989. For comments, please be in touch: pastorjohn@pilgrimsherborn.org.