It's almost a new year.  For many of us, this is a time for resolution, aspiration, goal, vision, and intention, a time that our hearts, if only for a moment, spur us to consider aiming for new heights of accomplishment, new levels of achievement, new pictures of who we think we ought to be.
     As it should.  We are creatures made to long to become something better than what we are at the moment, what we are today.  It is part of being human.  We all want improvement, we all want renewal.  Indeed, pity the person who supposes that she needs neither.
     Yet does not the writer of Ecclesiastes point out that, "There is nothing new under the sun"?  Absolutely.  But he also urges us to "do whatever our hand finds to do."  These are wise words.  Yes, life is a merry go round of routine and repetition (after all, 2014 is but one more year), but life is also a voyage of wonder.  It is a journey through our brokenness and sin, but it is also a journey through the inexhaustibility of God.  We and our planet may be changing, aging, even, unfortunately, deteriorating, but God remains new, unspeakably new for us and our world.  Always.  His infinite presence guarantees it.
      As the New Year dawns, walk in this newness.  Walk in the grace of the new, the freedom of God's more, his uncompromising abundance toward us.  Enjoy the magnificent promise he embodied, in his son Jesus, for our world.
      As tomorrow I will be traveling West again, this time for a backpacking expedition in the depths of the mountain winter, I will not be posting for a week or two or so.  I look forward to resuming our conversation at that time.
     Thanks for reading!