Click on 2015 in the index on the right of this blog. Next, click on the title of my December 31st blog, "The Shot Must Choose You." All my blog titles for 2015 will appear in the index.
As one year transitions into the next, there is a time for the closing of one chapter, and the opening of another.
In the New Testament Book of Philippians 3:13, we read,
Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this
one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth
unto those things which are before me.
(or)
… this one thing I do, leaving the past behind, and turning
to all that God has prepared for me.
As I recall, the heroine of the Victorian volume, “Jane Eyre,” once said,
(or was it “Anne of Green Gables”) paraphrased,
“The New Year is full of blank, and unblemished pages upon which no ink
has yet been spilled.”
Of course, beyond whatever “purposeful writing” we accomplish this year,
(i.e., our actions) there is that uncertainty of things to come; over which we
have little or no control, whatever.
(And admittedly, we should be very careful of the nature of the ink we
spill on the pages of our lives).
Job knew the “nature of the beast,” and he knew it very well. He was
familiar with the manner in which Providence intrudes to accomplish its own
“automatic writing” on those blank, and unblemished pages.
And none of us are exempt.
At this writing, my mother lies in a nearby hospital bed. It was only
yesterday, New Year’s Eve that I admitted her. And on the first day of a new
year, I cannot guess whether she will be with us on the 365th day of
this same year.
(Strangely enough, as I now reflect, I admitted my father to the hospital
on that same day, four years ago. And in the course of two months he went on to
his reward).
And as I have previously inferred, there are all manner of purposeful,
accidental and circumstantial “filling up of the pages” awaiting us this year;
some over which we are in complete control of the writing, (though not the
outcome) and some over which we have little or no control whatever.
There’s a line in an old hymn which reads something like,
“I don’t know about tomorrow, but I know who holds my hand.”
In all of it, I remain grateful to the One who holds my hand; for He has
assured me that He is the “I AM” of my past, present and future, and nothing,
nothing catches Him unawares, or unprepared.
I think the best we can hope for in this new year is to cooperate with God in that purposeful writing
which He has trusted us to do, and leave the circumstances over which we have
little or no control to His Providential wisdom and care.
“I don’t know about tomorrow, but I know who holds my hand.”
By William McDonald, PhD. Excerpt from "(Mc)Donald's Daily Diary" Vol. 21. Copyright pending
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