Good morning,
New Year's Eve is one of those few days in the year when just about everybody is thinking about the same thing. There's something dramatic about watching the old year slip away by counting the hours left in it, then the minutes, down to the seconds, when the old year has passed into history, never to come again.
We seldom think much about time except when we're running late or counting the days to a major event. Time is a lot like a river, carrying us all downstream. A lot of people have trouble with time management. That is, we often find it difficult to put first things first. Stephen Leacock once wrote, "How strange is our little procession called life! The child says, 'When I am big...' and then, grown up, he or she says, 'When I am married.' But then the thought turns to 'When I am able to retire.' Then when retirement comes, we look back over the landscape traversed. A cold wind blows over it. Somehow we have missed it all, and it is gone. Life, we learn too late, is in the living, in the tissue of every day and hour.'"
If there is anything we truly need in the New Year, it is to get closer to God, to grow in the love of our Savior, and to carry out His will for our lives. That will carry us through, no matter what the river of time may bring our way. Psalm 31 is almost entirely a prayer, but you can tell that it's not the kind of prayer that one prays out loud or one that is prayed with folded hands. No, it appears to be the kind of prayer Paul had in mind when he told us to PRAY CONSTANTLY. It's the kind of prayer that you pray while working or driving or when you're under a lot of stress, as David was here. He said:
Be merciful to me, O LORD, for I am in distress; my eyes grow weak with sorrow, my soul and my body with grief. My life is consumed by anguish and my years by groaning; my strength fails because of my affliction, and my bones grow weak. Because of all my enemies, I am the utter contempt of my neighbors; I am a dread to my friends-- those who see me on the street flee from me. But I trust in you, O LORD; I say, "You are my God." My times are in your hands; deliver me from my enemies and from those who pursue me.
Let your face shine on your servant; save me in your unfailing love. Let me not be put to shame, O LORD How great is your goodness, which you have stored up for those who fear you, which you bestow in the sight of men on those who take refuge in you. Praise be to the LORD, for he showed his wonderful love to me when I was in a besieged city. In my alarm I said, "I am cut off from your sight!" Yet you heard my cry for mercy when I called to you for help. Be strong and take heart, all you who hope in the LORD.
There may be times in this coming year when you too will feel cut off from God's sight. You may wonder if God has forgotten you. May the Lord make his face shine upon you. The Psalm says: Let your face shine upon your servant; save me in your unfailing love.
When God's face is shining upon His people, that means that he is SMILING upon them. What more could you ask from the New Year than that? Think of the grim-faced idols that you see on totem poles and the frowns they present to those who worship these gods. We have a God who came here personally to smile upon us while He walked and talked with us. The Psalm says: How great is your goodness, which you have stored up for those who fear you, which you bestow in the sight of men on those who take refuge in you. This is the God who is able to do so much more than we can ask or imagine. Jesus said, "In this world, you will have trouble, but don't be afraid, I have overcome the world."
Somebody described our frustrations with this life as coming from the fact that we, "have one foot in the finite and the other in the infinite." In other words, we live in two worlds, one bound by time with all of its limitations and the other eternal, unlimited, full of hope. He then went on to say that Jesus had the ability to relate the finite and the eternal. He is the Alpha and the Omega.
In Him,
Brown
"Life is half spent before we know what it is." George Herbert
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZcKWd7Cs6A
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