The God of second chances

The day after Christmas dawned gray and bleak. The forecast was snow, sleet, ice.

Opened presents begged to be sorted and put away. There were clothes to try on, returns to make. Leftovers filled the fridge, a reminder that dinner would be mostly warm-overs. A Christmas cookie tempted for breakfast, as well as a fancy hot cocoa mix that had been gifted the day before.

Christmas cards filled the mailbox. Sometimes the best ones come late, the ones that contain personal letters someone wrote just for you.

There was so much to say “yes” to. So many blessings.

But I let holiday buyer’s remorse creep in. Every year I promise myself I will be less the frenzied consumer and more the thoughtful, focused buyer, but this year was far from perfect. I regretted the too-muchness, the holiday excess, the bag of wrapping paper which couldn’t be recycled, the way I had left my own wishes vague and therefore received stuff I didn’t need or couldn’t use.

Listening to the morning news, I found myself disturbed with talk of how spending this season affected the economy, not how the birth of a Savior affected the state of our weary nation and world.

No, I did not wake up in a merry mood the day after Christmas. A sore knee still ached. I indulged that anti-climactic feeling not unusual on the day after a Big Day. I struggled between enjoying the laziness granted by the day after, and the day after’s emotional let-down. The bah-humbug bug had bitten me overnight.

And the fact that Christmas Day is followed, liturgically, by the feast of St. Stephen, stoned to death for his belief in Christ, seemed some kind of endorsement of my dour mood. Remember Debbie Downer on “Saturday Night Live?” I was Debbie in Grinch mode.

It was that morning, as I sat before God in distracted prayer, handing God my mood, that I thought about the approaching new year, and I felt the presence of the God of second chances.

This God of ours, tapping on my shoulder, always stands waiting. The God of second chances is always ready to move forward. Not that we aren’t supposed to acknowledge our failings. But we can’t linger in the past, spending time beating ourselves up as God makes plans for us.

So I handed God my wish-I-could-have-done-betters and moved on.

And I remembered the quote attributed to the German mystic Meister Eckhart, “If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is thank you, it will be enough.” This life we’ve been given, this “wild and precious life,” as the poet Mary Oliver called it, is our enormous gift. And everything, from family to fancy hot cocoa, is gift.

So I said thank you for a whole long list of things, and offered my day to God, the God of second chances, the God who led St. Stephen to Christ and to redemption.

I reminded myself that for the new year, I will not make ironclad resolutions which pave the way for failure in 2026. I will journal some simple suggestions of hope and promise, things on which to focus, like thankfulness or my morning attitude.

There are many things in the new year I can’t control. But I have power over my own attitude.

When I see those words in my journal, I’ll ask how I’m doing, and thank God for my progress, and then I will begin again, at that place where the God of second chances waits for me in the new year, and for all of us, as we move forward.

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