This Could Be…

As I read year-end letters, more Christmas cards and letters, headlines and articles, a common theme is always revisited this time of year — sure as New Year’s resolutions, are the slogans and affirmations: Out with the old, in with the New! This Year’s the Year for You!  The sentiments may have very different motivation, very different context, but the intent is the same: This year’s going to be the best year ever!

And they always are.  Today.

Today is the first day of the New Year… clean, fresh slate, an unmarked calendar, a new dawn, a bright new day unmarred by the oft repeated sins of our youth.  We may look back at previous years and see the failings that trip us up, the habits that chain us, the bitterness that superglues us to the past — but somehow, today, we have before us a new year with all the possibilities and none of the failures of the year that’s just passed by.  Every thing we ever wanted to do – to be – to say – to think: we can now plan (again) to do because THIS is going to be the best year ever.

And, you know… this could be.  This could be the best year ever.  This could be the year to crown all years.  It will all depend on what we say and do and think in response to all the God says and does and thinks toward us.  This could be the best year of our lives and not at all for all the reasons we might imagine. This could be the best year of our lives because of what God is doing in and through us or will do in and through us.

As you look back on the year that’s just passed, the year that’s so last year… Count your blessings, name them one by one… count your many blessings see what God has done.

This could be the year for you. I pray as I write this, that this will, indeed, be the year for you — and I pray all of these things for myself and my family, too, by the way — whenever I write “you” — I mean: me, too.  ♥

I pray this will be the year you see the loving kindness of the Lord.  I pray this will be the year you will take His hand and leave your hand in His.  I pray this will be the year you will trust Him, follow Him, obey Him, love Him, yield your self to Him and His leading.  I pray this will be the year you lay down your life, quit trying to go it alone — that you let go of all those things that bind you and lay them at the foot of the Cross.  I pray you will finish well —  this will be the year you will have been found faithful.

Could this be the year for you?