NOTES for Sa1 2:2

A new year is approaching. Of course, the New Year celebration is largely a convention, since in pre-Petrine Russia the first of September was regarded as the beginning of the year. And yet there is something beyond this convention: a desire to change one’s life, an attempt to take only what is good into the new year and leave everything bad in the past. Today’s text from the First Book of Samuel, like a tuning fork, sets the keynote for the whole year ahead. God is One, and in contemplating His unity each of us can find a foundation for our own integrity and for loving relationships with others. God is a rock; in Him lies all our hope for the future, the starting point for all our designs and plans. God is holy, and this means that He will never resign Himself to evil running rampant in our world; it means that evil is transitory, for God is eternal.