Seeing 2020

As we each look forward to moving into a new year, leaving 2020 and all its *glory* far, far behind, we may feel a need to rush blindly ahead with a quickness: tackling new projects and goals with gusto, rewriting and righting our wrongs, running from our yesterday into a better tomorrow by seizing every opportunity that presents itself or promises a new you, nearly willing altogether some certainty of what must become a much brighter, lighter, less uncertain, and definitely way more entertaining future after living through the year from you know where!

Right?!?

At least I feel all that. And I want all that, too. In spades.

But I confess I’m also feeling something like a warning deep down. A check, if you will. And it keeps repeating this refrain, “Don’t rush this moment. Let the new year unfold as they all have. Slowly. In God’s perfect timing.”

See, believe it or not, 2020 came as no surprise to God. None of our yesterdays have. Neither do our todays and nor will our tomorrows. There’s a reason and a purpose for all of it, and so, I don’t want to rush any of it. I don’t want to barge into the next year without giving this last one prior its proper due.

Because this moment -this day- is all we truly have. And I want with everything I have to learn to rest in that truth!

Rest in this very moment of this last day of a year that took its toll on even the strongest of us. And I don’t want to feel a need to run like a bull into the next one before I’ve taken the time to figure out what I’ve learned from the last. Before I’ve had the chance to revel in the good times the year held. Mourn the hard ones. Consider the mundane and superficial in all the messy that made up the middle. Then see and thank God for all of it, because He’s been right there with us all along the way. As ugly as it got. As beautiful as it was. As boring as it could become. As uncertain as it seemed. As scary as it felt. As long, lazy, lonely, and looming as it dragged on by.

And friend, I’d love it if you’d like to stop with me. Rest with me. Look back with God, but without regret, and forward without fear. Honor The Year of Our Lord that was 2020. Because we all know there was goodness there. And lessons. Love and light, too.

And then, let’s allow all the bad, guilt, fear, sadness, and shame that came along with it, to – as one of my favorite writers Oswald Chambers says – “rest in the sweet embrace of Christ.”

Then together, let’s give Him the pieces of Twenty Twenty, get His perfect vision for the year that was, and begin to embrace His still perfect vision for what’s surely to come❤️

“Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.” Psalm 23:6