By Cathy Hird
If we are old enough, we can always tell where we were when John F Kennedy was shot. I was in my kindergarten classroom, sitting on the floor. I remember not understanding why the teacher was so upset.

If a person is over twenty, we can say how we heard about the airplanes that struck the twin towers on September 11th. That event shifted events and cultural attitudes in North America and around the world.

Some days are momentous in our world or in our personal life. Others are filled with the ordinary activities of everyday life. Many days get crossed off the calendar, and looking back, it is hard to say what we did that day. We are certain we slept and ate and worked, but what we accomplished or what music we listened to or what conversations we had, we do not remember.

Even though a clock ticks evenly, time does not flow like a steady stream of water. It is more like a river with eddying pools, rapids and the occasional waterfall. In another way, time feels like a fountain that recycles the same water into spouts and flowing basins, a circle of night and day, seasons repeating in a yearly cycle.

I wonder what time feels like for you at this moment as the calendar shifts from 2015 to a new year.

On Sunday, I gave the people of the congregation I work for a blank postcard. I invited them to ponder what picture from 2015 they would put on one side, and what prayer for 2016 they would write on the other. For some, it was easy to identify the memory of last year that will always stick with them. For some, the prayer for the coming year expressed their hope for their own life, and for some it was a longing for a new thing in the world.

I can't hand every reader a blank postcard, but I invite you to imagine a small rectangular card, blank on both sides. What picture will always come back to you from last year? And when, you turn it over, what prayer, what dream or longing rises in you for the coming year. At this turning of the year, I invite you to take some time to ponder the moments of the year past and the needs and gifts that we anticipate in the year to come.

Time does not always flow in the way we expect. The year to come will surprise us. So I would like to share with you an ancient Hebrew writing, words that remind us that moments can pull us in opposite directions. There is a sense of wholeness despite the shifts of purpose and experience, and the writer concludes that all time is held in God. The words come from the book of Ecclesiastes chapter 3 (I have selected verses rather than give the whole), and this is from the New Revised Standard Version.

For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven:
a time to be born, and a time to die;
a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted...
a time to break down, and a time to build up;
a time to weep, and a time to laugh;
a time to mourn, and a time to dance...

a time to keep, and a time to throw away;
a time to tear, and a time to sew;
a time to keep silence, and a time to speak...

I know that whatever God does endures for ever; nothing can be added to it, nor anything taken from it; God has done this, so that all should stand in awe before him. That which is, already has been; that which is to be, already is; and God seeks out what has gone by.
Cathy Hird is a farmer, minister and writer living near Walters Falls.