New Year Blessing for Clocks and Calendars
On New Year’s Eve, as the old year gives way to the new, we pray together this blessing by Edward Hays, taken from his book Prayers for The Domestic Church: A Handbook for Worship in the Home. Pray it with us, and consecrate the minutes and months of your coming year to God.
Holy Creator, you who live outside of time,
and reside in the imperishable moment,
we ask you on the beginning of this New Year
your blessing upon your gift of time.
Bless our clocks and watches,
you who kindly direct us
to observe the passing of minutes and hours.
May these markers of time make us aware
of the miracle of each second of life we experience.
May these our ticking servants
help us not to miss that which is important
while you keep us from machine-like routine.
May we be ever free from being clock watchers
and instead become time lovers.
Bless our calendars,
these ordered lists of days, weeks and months,
of holidays, holydays, fasts and feasts –
all our special days of remembering.
May these servants, our calendars,
once reserved for the royal few,
for magi and pyramid priests,
now grace our homes and our lives.
May they remind us of birthdays and other gift-days
as they teach us the secret
that all life is meant for celebration and contemplation.
Bless, O Divine Marker of Time, this new year,
each of its 365 days and nights.
Bless us with new moons and full moons:
bless us with happy seasons and long life.
Grant to us, O God,
this new year’s gift
of a year of love.
Amen.
