Six months from today is New Year’s Day. It’s a day of resolutions that won’t be kept, it’s the beginning of election year, it’s football and parades and fireworks and family gatherings, and a time to renew hope that it will be a year of peace, prosperity, kindness, love, gratitude, and all things pleasant.
Promises, promises, promises. So, let’s look realistically at each day with an attitude of gratitude. Each day is New Year’s Day. Each day is an opportunity to bless others, to spread kindness and generosity, to bless others’ lives, and to pass the grace and mercy of Christ to a hurting world.
Elsewise, what are these sequences of days for? Ecclesiastes 3 says:
ys:
For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven:
2 a time to be born, and a time to die;
a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;
3 a time to kill, and a time to heal;
a time to break down, and a time to build up;
4 a time to weep, and a time to laugh;
a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
5 a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together;
a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
6 a time to seek, and a time to lose;
a time to keep, and a time to cast away;
7 a time to tear, and a time to sew;
a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
8 a time to love, and a time to hate;
a time for war, and a time for peace.
In our summary of days on this earth, there are several truths: we are born, hopefully to parents and friends who nurture us, discover our talents, give us guidance, and allow us to be who God created us to be. We learn from those who came before us to acquire education, life lessons, and a sense of our purpose and worth in this life. Under God’s direction, and what I call Godincidences, we mature and take up our role in society. We build relationships, we develop value and virtue, and right the wrongs we see around us. We act as responsibility individuals, influencing the world around us, and when it is time to greet senior citizen status, we’ve left a trail, be it good or bad, of influences. And when death becomes an imminent possibility, we prepare to meet our Creator and become a memory to those left behind.
Yesterday, the world lost a beautiful soul. Her name was Fran. She spent her life in service to others, and the memory she leaves behind is one of special blessing to her Creator. She was a Christian who worked hard to put the Savior’s values into practice in loving her family and friends and serving others at great expense of energy and expertise. She humbly attacked tasks others did not even see, and loved her family and friends well.
Today is her very special New Year’s Day. She is at the feet of Jesus, without cancer’s ravages, without worrying about the bills she slaved to pay, without caring for other people’s yappy dogs, without arthritic hands that surgeons tried to keep working, without caring for her dear Don who at ninety-four has seen almost a century of changes and struggles, and for Marie who survived brain cancer and now faces her own health issues. She prepared meals for others, and recently was humbly grateful for those brought to her, and she blessed everyone with her assurances that God is good all the time, and that His faithfulness is sue and His will is sovereign.
As she walks with the sure knowledge that she knows Christ more tender and more loving than we mortals can know Him, we rejoice that this is her Happy New Year’s Day.
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