See, I am doing a new thing!
Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?
I am making a way in the wilderness
and streams in the wasteland.
-Isaiah 43:19
Just a few more days of 2013 are left. Rolling around in my soul is this question, “What is the best way to tie up the loose ends of a year of your life?”
Because there are so many loose ends dangling around me. Like streamers left over from a big party, they still sing out with hopeful sounds of joy.
I don’t want to take them down. I don’t want to tie them up, either. I want all the unanswered prayers and still-long-awaited dreams from 2013 to stay right where they are.
Because faith puts hope in your heart that can’t be stopped by the flipping of a calendar page.
There is always more time for miracles. There are always faithful days ahead. The future is pregnant with possibility and I will fast today if it means feasting tomorrow.
This year began with a hope in my heart for God to do great things. Like almost everything in life, God has done only a few of the things I expected. Most of His great acts are still in seed form, veiled by His mysterious longsuffering ways and His lovingkindness.
God is patient and in no hurry to end the party.
The fire may look like it is reduced to embers, but one fresh log will prove He is not finished. I am off to chop wood this year and remind myself that the closer I get to Him the warmer I will be. The more wood I chop, the more light there will be to fill my life.
New Things. 2014 will be a year of New Things.
As those two words sail over me, I am a little afraid of grabbing ahold of the strings that tie them to our lives. Because New Things this year means I must leave a few old things behind.
My children are growing up. Gone are the days of itty bitty children. That kite, brilliant in color and difficult to control or tame, has sailed off into Neverland.
I’m learning the joy of letting go of yesterday so I can hold today more securely.
The beautiful streamers of Hope and Love and Joy and Peace remind me that time may move a little too quickly for my liking, but God’s promises never change. Babies crawl and then walk and eventually go off to school, and the waters of God’s grace rise up to baptize us all into the newness of His mercies.
There is not an end of the love, but always a beginning of a new sweetness. The old things pass away, and the song of life gains a new verse, with a truth and rhyme that seem to be more beautiful than any music we have heard before it.
That’s the way it has always been. That’s the way it always will be.
Yes, New Things in 2014. Just watch what God will do…
