Calendar Girl

My husband handed me the large white envelope.  "Here, this is for you," he said.  As soon as I saw the size and packaging, my eyes lit up with anticipation.  I had been wondering when it would arrive: My new desk calendar from the United Church of Christ!  I eagerly began ripping into the envelope.  "I wonder what the cover will say this year.  I wonder what color it will be!  I wonder what..."

And then it was in my hands-- this crisp, clean calendar, boldly proclaiming, "GOD'S VISION:"  Behind the white words, printed in capital letter's and cleverly using a red comma in place of the apostrophe, there were other words in varying sizes and shades of gray.  Hospitality, Restore, Redemption, Revive... Dream, Diversity, Welcome, Breathtaking, Together, Wondrous, Inclusive...and in larger fonts, words such as: LOVE, GRACE, ETERNAL, FAITH, HOPE.  Largest of all, screaming from the lower right-hand corner-- JOY!

In Stephen Sondheim's musical, "Sunday in the Park With George", there is a moment when the artist, George Seurat, contemplates a blank canvass.  It is, for him, perhaps even more exciting that when a work is "complete".  Many year's later, his son, reading from his mother's journal, speaks the words she wrote as she watched his father paint: "White. A blank page of canvas. His favorite. So many possibilities..."

I opened the calendar and looked at the clean boxes... month after month of empty dates.  I could feel the excitement in my soul.  I wonder... What will fill those days?  Where will God take me in the coming weeks and months of this new year?

Wherever it is, I pray that it will be filled with moments of discernment, smiles, artistry, transformation (all printed on the cover of the calendar)... I pray that God's vision speaks to me and through me, that I will foster places of hospitality and welcome, that I will be enriched by the diversity of God's kingdom, that if there is a small role for me to play in restoring people to God, I will find courage to play it.