There is New Year’s Eve service last night so I went to the church to attend it, getting inside the church there are some young people giving white candles and a small piece of white paper to people coming in.

The service consists of three different reflection and meditation for the past year, it started by turning out all the lights inside the church and lighting up a large candle and then passing the light and lighting up the candles that were given to everyone.  Our Pastor’s wife then read a passage from the bible from the book of Matthew 5: 14 and then everyone was asked how are light shone the past year, when does our light dies and when does it shine. Everyone was encourage to shine and continue passing the light to others.

The next reflection and meditation was all about forgiveness, it was leaded my Ms. E she was the preacher the previous Sunday. The reflection was from the book of Jeremiah 9: 26-28 which tells the story about how the Isralites meet in the temple to confess, it was told that when the status of their living is good they tend to forgot God so God punishes them by giving them trials and problems and that’s where they cry out to God and God put them in a right direction. I was just like the Isralites I have forgot God when my life is good, when everything was fine and I only remember Him when my life crumbles, when I became hopeless so I guess the hurt, the pain was my punishment from God for being forgetful, He simply reminds me that I am going in a wrong direction.

[Image source: christiancarguy.com]

God forgives and forgiveness comes when we confess, forgiveness is out of compassion. Ms. E says we cannot forgive when we don’t have compassion; forgiveness is a mission so she told everyone to forgive as the Lord forgives because we are not perfect and we all commit mistakes.

Then our pastor asked everyone to take-out the piece of small paper that were given to us and then everyone was asked to imagine writing all the things we want to ask for forgiveness in one side and on the other side the people we want to forgive, and then we are asked to go to the altar to bury the white paper in the sand and then we are told not to dig them anymore, to forget the past and not bring them in the present.

[Image source: kikiramsey.com]

The last reflection and meditation was about the solid rock in Joshua 4:1-9, God is the solid rock; He is the strong foundation, our hiding place and home.  Our pastor told everyone that in every task that the Isralites completed they built memorial to serve as reminder of God’s faithfulness, and for the knowledge of the new generation then everyone was asked to picked a stone in the altar, and utter a prayer and wish to God what do we want this coming year and the stone we choose will serve as a memoir.