At New Years, my father loved to quote this part of the poem "The Desert" by Minnie Louise Haskins.

And I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year:
'Give me a light, that I may tread safely into the unknown!'
And he replied:
'Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the Hand of God.
That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way.'
So, I went forth, and finding the Hand of God, trod gladly into the night
And [God] led me toward the hills and the breaking of day in the lone East.

I think I was supposed to absorb the idea that we cannot know the future, we cannot see further than the moment, but we can trust God is with us. Fair enough. My father wanted me to understand that, though the world can be confusing and unpredictable, trust in God provides security where no human assurance can.

That is the kind of reason, I would guess, that King George read this poem in his Christmas address in 1939 as war began. In that time, his people could not know what was coming. They could not be certain how the days and years ahead would play out. Giant search lights would play their part, combing the sky for bombers, but a light alone would not be enough.

But in these days and in that context, the words trouble me. There is a kind of abdication of responsibility in it. This is most obvious in the rest of the poem. Particularly troubling lines read, "What need our little life/ Our human life, to know/ If God hath comprehension?/ In all the dizzy strife/ Of things both high and low/ God hideth [God's] intention."

Whatever the poet intended, reading it in 1939 implied that God had a plan for the war years. It's the attribution of the trouble people faced in 1939 to God that bothers me. I am not going to trace the political reasons for the outbreak of war here, but it was a human action, a human intention.

That war was willed by people. So are the conflicts seething in today's world. So are many of the other troubles that people will face in the months and days of 2019.

In the service I lead on Sunday, I offered questions into the silence of people's meditation. I wondered who our companions will be this year, what creation is asking of us, what touchstones in the world will keep us connected to God, among others. It was a time to reflect on how we enter this year.

I forgot to ask, "What do we will for this year?" I avoided asking, "What do we intend?"

The questions I asked were meditative. But I realize now they were passive, asking about the world around us and what we might interpret from our encounter with people, events, creatures. I forgot to ask what we plan to do. I did not bring the question to what originates in our hearts, our minds, our spirits and bodies.

What will our hands do this year? What will we build, and what will we break?

Where will our dreams take us, and what marks will our feet leave in the days to come?

What will our words accomplish? And what will we wish we said better because what we spoke was not what we intended to say? What will we choose not to say?

The thing is, the year we live will be shaped by our actions. Not totally. Weather and accidents happen around us. Other people do things we could not plan for. But often that unexpected action is still shaped by what we said or did or did not do.

What we will for this year matters. What we intend will shape our lives and the lives of those we care about and some strangers' lives as well.

Perhaps we made some resolutions about things we want to do or change. Change doesn't come though without the will to act. Change in the world requires community will and political will.  When we look at the needs of the environment and human communities, we need to choose change, choose what we intend, what we will.

Cathy Hird lives on the shores of Georgian Bay.