in His hands

We had a sweet and large group of girls here last night for Lily's 16th birthday party, and this morning over sausage gravy and biscuits, one of them said, "This was a really strange and hard year. The Lord has been good. But...I'm so ready to start a new one."

I amen'd her over a bottomless pile of dishes. It HAS been a really strange and hard year. And the Lord has been so faithful, every single step of the way. And I'm so ready to start a new one! I love He gives us NEW so often. New mornings, new weeks. New months, new years, new seasons. He is so constant, and making all thing new...another one of those paradoxes of the faith that I cherish. 

Matt and Ben hung together last night with 15 girls, and I can.not.believe. our Lily girl is about to be 16. That's something other people's kids do, not mine! It all just goes faster and faster the older they get, and I can't believe she is all the 16 things. And she IS. The Lord's got good plans for this girl, His power being trusted for her weaknesses, and lots of glimpses of His goodness throughout even the hardest of teenage days. 

This is what Oswald Chambers tells me every December 31st, and I'm clinging to the simple truth again:

The Lord will go before you this new year. What a gracious revelation—that God will send His forces out where we have failed to do so! He will keep watch so that we will not be tripped up by the same failures, as would undoubtedly happen if He were not our rear guard. God’s hand reaches even back to the past, settling all the claims against our conscience. 

As we go forth into the coming year, let it not be in haste. Let us go out with the patient power of knowing that the God of Israel will go before us. Our yesterdays hold broken and irreversible things for us. We have lost opportunities that will never return, true. But God can transform this destructive anxiety into a constructive thoughtfulness for the future. 

Let the past rest, but let it rest in the sweet embrace of Jesus. Leave the broken, irreversible past in His hands, and step out into the invisible future with Him.