2014 having exited the ages, you come to us as a brand new year pregnant with new milestones, new challenges, new opportunities, new discoveries, new regrets, new successes, new failures, etc.
The Lord has spoken:
"For I am about to do something new.
See, I have already begun! Do you not see it?
I will make a pathway through the wilderness.
I will create rivers in the dry wasteland."
Isaiah 43:19, NLT
As we begin partaking of your fares, dear 2015, we have much to consider:
1) We get to live prayerfully. Storms and crises will rock our boat. As they do, the words of this familiar hymn still remain true:
"What a Friend we have in Jesus
All our sins and griefs to bear
What a privilege to carry
Everything to God in prayer
Oh! What peace we often forfeit
Oh! What needless pain we bear
All because we do not carry
Everything to God in prayer."
2) We get to live gratefully. Offenses and insults will come our way; bad news will also be thrown into the mix. And sometimes, the rewards for our hard labor will come not in fat portions but in their meager versions. However, the will of God remains true:
"Give thanks in all circumstances,
for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus."
1 Thessalonians 5:18, NIV
3) We get to live humbly. Opportunities and achievements will tempt us to be proud, conceited, and entitled. Prestige and human praise will cajole our hearts to think of ourselves higher or better than others. The truth, however, resides in another approach:
"God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble."
James 4:6, NIV
4) We get to live openly. Self-centeredness and shame will flare and counsel us to hide behind masks of self-sufficiency or hypocrisy. True wisdom tells us:
"Whoever conceals their sins does not prosper,
but the one who confesses and renounces them finds mercy."
Proverbs 28:13, NIV
Indeed, His mercy bids us to grow more loving, gracious, ethical, joyful, peaceful, patient, kind, good, faithful, gentle, generous, modest, forgiving, temperate, vulnerable, honest, excited, passionate, restored, committed, laborious, encouraging, accountable, dependable . . .
. . . as well as more contrite, mocked, teary, grieved, broken, torn, sorrowful, lampooned, enduring, mistreated, persevering, battered, abandoned, attacked, rebuked, persecuted, ridiculed, rejected, slapped, afflicted, tried, tested, made to see hard things . . .
We get to partake of Christ's joys and sufferings even more in 2015 because the loving Father has graced us with one more invitation to rely solely on the HAND of Christ and not upon our own whims or preferences.
Come what may -- triumphs or trials, ups or downs, births or deaths, plenty or want, health or illness, friendship or enmity -- may 2015 teach us that the steadfast love of the Lord never ceases and that His mercies never come to an end; in fact, they are mercies renewed to us every morning the Lord awakens us to see!
