New year musings

Happy new year, everyone!

Now, there are many things that accompany a new year,—both cliché traditions and novel resolutions—and I believe that these things are what give the beginning of every year it's newness. We begin a new year feeling like things can be different for us this time, and the resolutions we make are sure proofs of this fact.

Personally, I see the beginning of a new year as an opportunity to readjust and do things better, perhaps even start over. It's one of those periods I refer to as steady bookmarks in the tales that are our lives. And though I know not everyone feels this way, with their good reasons as well, I wanted to share something with us today.

So, I have this habit where I tend to ask God for specific words in perceived new seasons of my life. And the word I got for this year, was 'New Beginnings'. Boy, did I have questions. I kept wondering just what I was going to have to start over or if I was going to have to end some things with the advent of this year. So while I was already thinking of those, imagine my surprise when I asked the Lord for supporting scriptures and he directed me back to the scriptures he'd given to me for 2020.

A part of me went something like, "Wait, you're giving me recycled scriptures for a New Beginning?", in my head.

Please, do join me as we thank the Lord for his limitless patience.

Well, after my mentally voiced disbelief, I felt led to peruse each scripture again, and as I did, I saw them open up in a way they never had before. I felt this soul-deep, aching assurance that, "Yes! This was what 2021 was going to be all about!". Honestly, I'm giddy just thinking about what I'm sure God has placed in store for me.

Right now, I can say that if there's one thing that moment with God taught me, it was that the advent of a new year doesn't necessarily have to mean the exclusive, abrupt end of a previous season for everyone. Neither does it have to mean that you need to prove a point about how the days are no different, by stubbornly carrying the hurts of the previous year into the next.

Rather, take this new year as an opportunity to begin again. You might have suffered in the year 2020, made some wrong mistakes, met the wrong kind of people or even cowered at stages you should have proudly stood. Well, here's a chance to do things differently. Give yourself grace, forgive yourself, and walk into this new year with a heart open to fresh possibilities.

I'm not saying that you have to forget the previous year, because I believe no matter how dark, every past can have a lesson for us to learn, even if it just serves as history telling—I think this was something the Lord showed me by giving me scriptures for the previous year all over again. They will serve as a reminder to me, ever screaming, "build on previously laid foundations even while focusing on the future building blocks".

Still, even as you learn from the past and find ingredients for growth in its experiences, allow yourself take your focus away from the things of the past, glory in this present called the present, and anticipate a better, more beautiful future ahead. Trust God for it!

"Forget about what's happened;

don't keep going over old history.

Be alert, be present. I'm about to do something brand-new.

It's bursting out! Don't you see it?"

—Isaiah 43:18–19; Message Version.

There's so much to expect in this new year. So much God is willing to do in and with us. In the words of the Message version, "Don't you see it?!"