Now that we are at the beginning of a new year and a new decade, we are bound to be envisioning the future, at least the next year. Hopefully many of you have set goals or New Years resolutions and have a plan to be part of the 8% that keep the resolutions and not the 92% that don't. Better yet, you may have created a life plan as we discussed over the past few weeks as the structure, or framework from which you can hang your goals.
This can also be a great time to reflect on the previous year and celebrate accomplishments and milestones, but there is bound to be hard things, plans and hopes that went unfulfilled, even events that caused heartache.
This is what I see as I look back on 2019:
I hope that sharing my story has resonated with some of you. I hope that you can see the joy of things to be celebrated, the sorry of loved ones lost, while being forever grateful to have had them in your life and the lessons learned from their legacies. I hope that you can see how planning your career and future can end up very differently from what you planned and maybe hoped for, but how that can often turn into being a gift, a blessing from God to be given the opportunity to take care of more important things, to grow from the trial, and for new beginnings.
Action Item for this week:
Reflect back on 2019 and think about what you can celebrate, be grateful for, and given you opportunities for growth. Then envision 2020 and how you can carry on the successes and turn the struggles from the past into growth opportunities for your envisioned future.
"Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. 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 43:18-19). God tells us, even in the Old Testament, that He is doing a new thing. A new thing is a good thing. He is making a WAY for us in the wilderness, He is giving us streams of living water in times we are in the wastelands.
"Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!" (2 Corinthians 5:17). There it is! Right on the pages of God's Word we are told that we are being made new. We can choose to believe it and walk in that truth, or we can deny the power of God and His power to change even the deadest of hearts into hearts softened with love. He is making all things new, He is bringing the dead back to life!
"You may have a fresh start any moment you choose, for this thing that we call 'failure' is not the falling down, but the staying down." —Mary Pickford
"And now let us welcome the new year, full of things that never were." —Rainer Maria Rilke
"The first step towards getting somewhere is to decide you're not going to stay where you are." —John Pierpont "J.P." Morgan
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