Happy New Year

Here's a quote from Luther to ponder this New Year's Eve:

"For through much practice, I have now come to the point (God be praised) that I am just now really beginning to believe that God is the Creator of heaven an earth. Everyone now and at all times understands, has understood, and will understand this text all too well- except for myself alone and a few other poor sinners and fools, like Moses, David, Isaiah, and such people (among whom I can only boastfully place myself by saying: Nos poma natamus ["I am floating along with the other apples"] - [that is,] like horse dung among apples). These people consider God to be a man of wonders and say that His creation  is nothing but wondrous works. Yet very few see God's wondrous works, though everyone sees His creation and cannot help but grasp and feel it, as St. Paul says in Acts 17 [26:-27]. However, I, too, am one of the course fellows who do not yet comprehend His creation and (as I said), I have just begun to believe this, so that, as an old student and a doctor now almost at the end of my days, I must rightly wonder at how the people in our time know everything that the Holy Spirit knows as soon as they have so much sniffed at a book. Yet they go off on their way and see nothing of the things God does daily before our eyes, which are both terrifying and comforting. They give it no heed, as if it were all a charlatan's trick. Through Adam's sin human nature has fallen so far from God and His image- that is, from knowing Him [cf. Col. 3:10]- that we do not understand our own body and life, how wonderfully these are daily created, granted, and preserved by God. Therefore, is it any wonder if we are obstinate, stubborn, utterly blind, and [insensible] logs toward His other wondrous works, which He reveals to us in all creatures, besides our own body and life?" [LW 60:119]