Thoughts on a New Year

It’s that time of year again. I love the process of reviewing last year and looking forward to the next, some of which I have been sharing on this blog. As Samuel Logan Brengle wrote,

It seems impossible that a year could have passed so swiftly, and yet the return of this day assures me that once more the earth has run her wondrous race through lanes of light, and vast voids of space, and deep abysses of the night, amid the silent pomp and splendor of star-strewn heavens, completing another of her ceaseless cycles around the sun, ending another year and bringing us to this day.

When I was a little boy on the sun-bathed prairies of southern Illinois, a year seemed interminable. It moved forward on leaden feet, but now the years pass me like the flash of sunlit bubbles on wind-tossed waves, as though they must hasten and lose themselves in that eternity when time shall be no more. And yet what an unspeakable gift of God is a year! Who can compute its value or estimate its worth? We give and receive our little gifts and rejoice, but how paltry they are compared to God’s gift of a year of days!

He has given me one more year, and I praise Him. It has been a good year. He has crowded it with mercies. He has crowned it with blessings. He has kept me from sin. He has not permitted me to fall. He has not let my enemy triumph over me. He has directed my paths, He has ordered my steps. He has given success to my labors. He has kept my heart and mind in peace, and in loving-kindness has opened to me the gates of another year, through which I enter with trust, and yet with trembling. I do not fear that I shall fall, though I know I must watch and pray lest I fall; but I trust unfalteringly that my watchful Keeper—my Good Shepherd—who has guarded me with such sleepless care through these many years, will hold me up (from Resurrection Life and Power, chapter 10).

Well said. Happy New Year.