Food for the Journey – New Years Eve 2020

Last New Year’s Eve I was with friends in North Dakota quite sick with the flu.  While everyone else partied, I slept in-between inviting my husband to bring me hot tea.  Meanwhile back in Duluth, our intern, Daniel, along with Karen, our organist, led an AA gathering in prayer, song and candle lighting.  We offered our space so people would have a place to welcome in the New Year without alcohol.

It isn’t the first time a church I’ve served has gathered on New Year’s Eve.  In Jersey City, I was led by my people to open up the church for a potluck meal and a service of prayer and song to ring in the New Year.  We actually did ring the bells at midnight; perhaps, to the annoyance of early-to-bed neighbors.

What an honor it was to be present at this service whose roots go back to gatherings held on December 31, 1862.  This night was also known as Freedom’s Eve. According to tradition, Blacks who were enslaved and those who were free gathered in churches or private homes waiting for their freedom to arrive at midnight—the day Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation was to become law. At midnight, all slaves in the Confederate States were declared legally free. Can we even imagine the prayers, the shouts of Alleluia, the songs of joy as people danced or fell to their knees thanking God?

Would that at the stroke of midnight this year such news of freedom would be realized across nations- freedom from fear, from war,  from this pandemic, from hunger, from anxiety about what tomorrow might bring, from racial injustice yet to be realized.  And yet, if we have arrived at this moment, I imagine you, like me, are grateful to leave 2020 behind – are grateful to have survived 2020 to be able to pray, to sing songs, to maybe dance and certainly to fall to our knees and thank God for another day and another year which we pray will bring hope and healing.

Happy New Year, Everyone!