A hard, hard year has just ended,

Yet many normal things remain suspended

Leaving us with problems far greater than we’d conceived

Exposing our existence to be frailer than we’d believed

There’s light at the end of the tunnel, we are told.

Yet the end seems too far away for us to behold.

Life is a coin, whose one side is insecurity

Flip the coin, and there lies opportunity.

The opportunity to be here in the present

Leaving behind the past that we resent

Fearing not the future that we can’t see

Knowing we are where we’re meant to be.

Our Lord is forever within us, in our solitary heart

Raising beautiful flowers in broken soil is his art

What we see as broken, he sees as a work in progress

His glorious plan for us goes on, even through life’s duress

The world is the soil where our soul blossoms brighter

As he makes our path clearer, mind wiser, heart lighter.

Seek first to do what is right in his eyes

Not to make the world right in our eyes

Let’s be here with him, open to improvement

And he will enrich us through life’s every movement

Resolve to be with the One who is omnipresent

And every moment will convey his loving present.

Chaitanya Charan

01/01/2021