WRITTEN BY MICHELE HANSEN
I’m definitely not one to make New Year Resolutions. I’m not going to break my streak now. What I do like to do is look back on the year and see how I have changed, what I have learned, what I am bringing into the new year and what I do not want to bring into the new year.
My routine every year, on New Years Day is, I take almost the whole day in my quiet space at home and read through my journal that I have written in every day in the last year (which I have been doing for almost 28 years now). It’s so encouraging and cathartic for me. I find out so much about myself and the faithfulness of God.
I honestly have no idea what to do with all those notebooks, journals, organizers and a host of other things that have accumulated through the last 28 some odd years. My son said he wants them…I think I might need to have a big ol’ bonfire.
Reflecting. Thinking back on the past. For some that might be a horror, or at least unpleasant. For others, it’s a mix of joy and sorrow, answered prayer and still waiting. We have no idea what our futures hold, but we can know who holds our futures.
I think some of my most challenging years have been the ones I’ve grown the most and as believers, that’s generally the same for all of us. We grow in the valleys. We don’t want to be in the hard places and we don’t look for the challenges, but if we are going to be living on this earth for any amount of time, and if we are and have been walking with the Lord, we know that living through the hard stuff by faith is what makes us strong in the Lord.
We are all going to pass from this earth someday. It’s inevitable. For believers, we know where we are going, but I think, we still cling a little too tightly to this world because of those in it with us. We can’t imagine what it’s like to be in heaven with the Lord.
The longer we are here, the more things we have to remember…and forget. Some that are leaving us now have been around to see world wars, motor vehicles evolve, technology out of a sci fi movie. They have witnessed so many changes it can’t be imagined. And dare I say, our senior saints can be the most forgotten. Relics from a bygone age.
I’m quickly becoming that generation.
That’s probably why I journal so much. I don’t want to forget where I’ve been, what I’ve learned, what God has taught and continues to teach me. I am one of those that have a before Christ and after Christ story. It’s important to remember because the Lord will use our testimony for His glory. I have to continue to focus on the fact that it was by God’s grace that He redeemed me and so not be a glory hog.
Our stories are the picture that grace paints in our lives. When we stop to reflect, to really remember, the obvious reaction should be gratitude. Were it not for the amazing grace and mercy He pours into His children’s lives, the beauty of Christ would be a pale shadow. If we don’t live as a trophy of God’s abundant provision, protection and favor, His majesty is a sandcastle being washed away by the ocean tide.
The another amazing thing about reflection is just that…like the moon to the sun, we are to be a reflection of our great God to a broken world that is distracted by empty hopes and tinsel dreams. The only real hope is in the God of the universe that sent His only son to earth as a baby, to grow into the Redeemer of our souls. The fact that He sits at the right hand of the Father and is waiting to be told to…”Go get our family…” should instill an overwhelming desire to proclaim, worship and be in awe on our knees in praise to the One who is and was and is to come. From the Bride to the Bridegroom…Hallowed be His Name. This new year, take time to reflect and to be a reflection.
