Happy God-blessed new year to you all!

Mixed feelings always accompany us all at the threshold of another new year.

While there is gratitude for the old year, while there is hopeful anticipation for a new year, there is also that uncertainty, the fear even, about new beginnings. Humans as we are, we prefer to stay always in comfort and familiar zones.

We know much about yesterday, we are now experiencing today. Tomorrow is beyond our past and our present. The future will soon be here and unlike today and yesterday, we do not know, we are uncertain, we have mixed emotions, we have our joys, our faith and hope as well as our fears in meeting, in allowing tomorrow to be our today, our present.

Our past and our present brought and are bringing us joys and gains as well as challenges and pains. We gratefully acknowledge and embrace all that have been, all that are in the now. Still, for sure, there are many of us who feel hesitant, reluctant to let go of the past and the present and to allow and to welcome and to embrace the future, our tomorrow, a new year, a new beginning.

In the midst of these mixed emotions, we remember the reminders from all others who have trekked, who have travelled this same crossroad at the end of an old year and the beginning of a new one. Consider and keep in your hearts this timely sharing from the December 30th reading of Our Daily Bread for 2010 which is aptly entitled: No Fear In The New Year.“ Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by your name; you are Mine.” (Isaiah 43:1) What kind of a new year will it be for you, for us all? No one is absolutely certain but again, from the same Our Daily Bread reading, let us all carry this meaningful reflection with us through all the new years of our life…

“No one can predict with certainty how stormy the new year will be. We do know, though, that everyone will face storms. But we who have Jesus have our future securely moored to Him. Jesus, who did not fail us in the past, will not fail us in the future…If you’re anchored in Jesus, you have nothing to fear ( C.P. Hia). Faith in Christ will keep us steady in the stormy sea of change. And so let the new year come for without doubt, the new year comes with God and His blessings of provision, of peace, of protection, of His presence and His great love! No need to fear as God is with us through the new year and the years to come just as He had been with us through the past. All we need to remember is “Thus far has the Lord helped us (1 Samuel 7:12). “The Lord who

‘thus far’ has helped you will help you all your journey through, When the words “thus far” are

read in heaven’s light, what glorious and miraculous prospects they reveal to our grateful eyes!” (Charles H. Spurgeon in the December 31st reading of L. B. Cowman’s Streams in the Desert). “ Before is a a future all unknown, a path untrod; beside us a Friend well loved and known- that Friend is God. ( taken from Quiet Moments with God for Mothers). Let Dondon’s prayer for the December 31st reading of the Living Water also be yours, be ours: “Jesus, You are the same yesterday, today, and forever. Thank you for Your faithfulness to me this year. Into your hands I entrust my future, Amen.”

So let us all remind ourselves to “ be simple; ( and to) take our Lord’s Hand and walk through things.”(Father Andrew in Quiet Moments with God for Mothers).

Let us walk through the new year with our hands in God’s hands! Let us meet the new year and remember that each new year and each new day “is the day that the Lord has made: and so let us all rejoice and be glad in it! ( Psalm 118:24).

Years may change and days may come and go but let us steady ourselves and with faith, hope, and love, always remember, like Charles Kingsley did, that “all but God is changing day by day.”

“Blessed be the Lord, who daily loads us with benefits.” ( Psalm 68:19).

God will certainly bring us all through yet another grace-filled new year!!! How can we

continue to thank, love, and serve God for yet another God-blessed new year?

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