As long as I can remember, our family has traditionally eaten black-eyed peas on New Year’s Day. I remember my grandmother telling me (in fun) some folklore about how for every pea you eat on New Year’s, you’d get a nickel during the year. (That’s close, anyway.)
Vogue.com says: Black-eyed peas are enjoyed on New Year’s Day as a way to invite good fortune and prosperity. The beans represent coins, the greens they are served with symbolize paper money, and cornbread is for gold. Black-eyed peas are also traditionally cooked with pork, which signifies progress because pigs root forward.
Neither I nor my grandmother ever thought black-eyed peas were really connected to my fortune in any given year. But it’s fun (and delicious) to have them on New Year’s Day, anyway. (And I did put bacon in them, but not because pigs root forward. That makes me laugh.)
As I washed them, I thought about how many I’d eat if I really thought I’d get a nickel for every one I ingested. I’d have to return to Sam’s for at least one more big bag. I went down a little ADHD path in my mind about how wonderful it would be if black-eyed peas could really give me prosperity, and about how I know the things that give me prosperity in the most real and eternal way. I thought about Deuteronomy 30 and what God said to Israel about returning to the place of prosperity:
Now it shall come to pass, when all these things come upon you, the blessing and the curse which I have set before you, and you call them to mind among all the nations where the LORD your God drives you, and you return to the LORD your God and obey His voice, according to all that I command you today, you and your children, with all your heart and with all your soul, that the LORD your God will bring you back from captivity, and have compassion on you, and gather you again from all the nations where the LORD your God has scattered you. If any of you are driven out to the farthest parts under heaven, from there the LORD your God will gather you, and from there He will bring you. Then the LORD your God will bring you to the land which your fathers possessed, and you shall possess it. He will prosper you and multiply you more than your fathers. And the LORD your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your descendants, to love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul, that you may live.
God told Israel he would prosper them if they returned and obeyed. But notice the promised prosperity involved both circumcision of the heart and a resultant love for God with all of heart and soul. I want to prosper this year, but not in accumulated nickels. I want to prosper in circumcision of my heart that I may love him with everything I have.
Romans 2:28-29 gives a little more insight into this prosperity of a circumcised heart:
For he is not a Jew who is one outwardly, nor is circumcision that which is outward in the flesh; but he is a Jew who is one inwardly; and circumcision is that of the heart, in the Spirit, not in the letter; whose praise is not from men but from God.
There will be many accumulated dollars this year. Praise will be given by peers for prosperity in many human endeavors in 2026. I want to find the praise that is not from men, but from God.
May you have a truly prosperous New Year!
’
