Happy New Year

Welcome to the most celebrated holiday in the world! Last night we saw displays of excitement from cultures we never even think about, from intriguing to the bazaar, poignant to pointless. But all having this in common: humans wonder what's to come. 2017 may have left us fleeing into 2018 or reluctantly shoved...but we are all curious about what will fill the next 365 days.
This past year was a constant counting for us;
deadlines and due dates, furniture, children, the stuff of changes...bustling in and out, filling and emptying our house faster than I could sweep up the swirling dust bunnies.
Counting days began in the beginning -when God agreed to make Himself, the immeasurable...measurable and in that moment He made matter, matter.
Days matter. Days are meant to be filled.
After all, what is measuring and counting all about if not to determine fullness
and to evaluate the how and the when of what is spent?
Given all that I wish I had written about on the spending of 2017, I have a new journal for 2018.
It is thick and blank and green.
And I intend to fill it with the black ink of record-keeping, of the how and when my days are filled and drained and filled again.
Will this year be a year when long longings are filled or hidden ones are brutally exposed or when I am simply left to wait to understand the purpose of it all?
Ephesians 4:10 reminds us that Jesus came to "fill all things", even time itself.
Galatians 4:4 says, "But when the fullness of time had come, God sent His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons."
The purpose of time was for God to make himself knowable, tangible, seen and felt and the best representation of all He is and all He meant humanity to be- is Jesus. Jesus IS the purpose of every moment of every day of every year so that the whole earth would be filled with His power and beauty and love. Jesus' life was spent because ours needed to be set back on track, filled and spent on the more we were designed for...life as His children.
I am so thankful for God's power and kindness in redeeming us and the moments of our lives. I'm so thankful for how Jesus emptied Himself so that we could "know the love of Christ which surpasses (mere) knowledge, so that we may be filled up (with the actual experience) of all the fullness of God." Eph. 3:19
I pray that our new days will become exciting displays of His love, power, and beauty.
May the redemption of our moments,
our stupidities and clarities
failures and victories
wanderings and findings
losings and winnings
takings and givings
count when they are counted.
Happy
New
Year!