Have a Happy New Year.... Now!

Posted by guest blogger BroKen

Happy New Year! "Fast away the old year passes, fa la la la …" The old is gone, behold, everything is new! Really?

Here we are on New Year's Day; a day in which we take all that has happened in the last half million minutes (actually a bit more since 2008 was a leap year) and compress it down to an hour for a PBS special or maybe ten minutes on the nightly news. But it's not just the past we compress. We also look ahead to what we think will happen this coming year. That imagined future is also pressed down to manageable size so that we can plan or at least make a resolution to make a plan.

So, take all your memories of last year squeezed into a neat little package; all of the progress and success along with the pain and the sorrow. If you have more of the former, perhaps you will want to place the package on the mantle. If you have more of the latter, you will want to toss it in the garbage. Wherever it ends up, it still is what is. It happened.

Then there are the packages of the future; all our hopes and fears. Some of us have more of one than the other. In any case they will be opening up over the coming months. Many of them (especially the fears) will be found empty.

On New Year's Day, like every day, we're at the nexus of Past and Future. So we stand like Robert Frost where "two roads diverged in a yellow wood." We can look back, but still we must go on. We can dream or plan or fear invisible days ahead. But where we live is always Now.

Choices are terribly important. A wrong choice at the wrong time can devastate generations. You've observed that even if you haven't chosen poorly yourself (though you probably have.) But the right choice made anytime will change a person's life (and I mean this literally…) forever.

You see, there is One who lives in the Now but who also lives in the Past and the Future. The Now for Him is Always, even Past and Future. And not only does He live in the Past and Future, He created them. You might say they are in the palm of His hand.

If your past is frightful and your future doubtful, remember, God has the final word and can redeem all the pain you have experienced and trade it for joy. And if your past is glorious; your future seems secure, be careful. No one is promised tomorrow.

Let me tell you "this with a sigh." The choices we made yesterday are nothing. The choice we make today is everything. And the choices of tomorrow may never happen. THE CHOICE, the only one that matters, is to trust the One Who made yesterday, today and tomorrow. Rest in the palm of His hand. That choice "makes all the difference."

Comments

[Mommynator]

That is the one thing I'm learning, having learned it from a really dark night of the soul of a few years ago.

Your post is very very true.