It Starts Where It Ends

I don't know about you, but 2009 was not the best year for me.

Don't get me wrong, it had some incredible bright spots - my summer, in particular, was absolutely fantastic. Positively life-changing.

But on the whole... Yeah, 2009 was kinda lame.

Part of what made 2009 so hard for me was... well, me. I made it hard on myself, really. For all the stuff I learned over the past year, it's amazing that it took me all the way until the end of it to realize that the only way any of it could do me any good was if I would just chill out for a bit and let God do His thing, instead of trying to do it for Him.

I spent so much of this past year working myself into conniptions over things that I either could no longer control or had no control over in the first place. Did I say the right thing? Should I have maybe used a different word there? Was I fully understood the way I wanted to be? Would we still be talking if I'd done things differently? What if I'd done all of this earlier? What if I'd waited and done it all later? What if I'd just ignored it all and continued on with the way things were?

The questions were absolutely endless, and I'm sure you can see how they would stress me out, which they definitely did, and to quite an impressive degree. Everything was awful. Even when I found myself in the good times - and they were plenty, whether I'd have admitted it then or not - I was still miserable because I couldn't let go. I couldn't stop obsessing over choices I'd made, or choices other people had made, wondering if it was all going to work out the way I wanted it to.

That was another big moment this year - finally figuring out that, NO, it won't all work out the way I want it to, and that's actually a good thing.

When I was a little kid, I would sneak into the kitchen and steal cheese from the fridge. As I grew older, I dropped any pretense of "sneaking" around - largely because my parents somehow always knew when it happened, but also because my desire for cheese outweighed any potential guilt or shame I could possibly have felt if my cheese-theft was made public.

Now, I still make the occasional cheese raid, but I have learned how to be more selective in my timing. I learned, through years of experience, that having that cheese whenever I wanted it was leading to complications, not the least of which being that we would quite often run out of cheese at extremely inopportune times. I learned that getting what I wanted (cheese) when I wanted it (at all times) would occasionally have dire consequences for my future (a burrito without cheese is a tragedy easily on par with the end of Old Yeller).

So I've learned something again. I've learned that God might not want me to have everything I want. Maybe God has been holding off on giving me everything I want because He's trying to get me ready for everything I actually need.

Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?

And why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will He not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?

So do not worry, saying, "What shall we eat?" or "What shall we drink?" or "What shall we wear?" For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them.

But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

- Matthew 6:25-34

You can't always get what you want

You can't always get what you want

You can't always get what you want

But if you try sometimes, well, you just might find

You get what you need...

- The Rolling Stones

And so, it is with that attitude of contentedly satiated patience that I look forward to 2010.

I don't know what's going to happen to me in this coming year. I don't even know what's going to happen to me tomorrow night. But with everything I've learned in the past year, there is one thing that I know for sure, and that is this: one way or another, God is working some pretty big changes in my life. I'd better pay attention to what's going on.

I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead. Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me.

Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.

- Philippians 3:10-14

As we step into a New Year, my earnest prayer - not only for myself, but for you, as well - is that we are all able to move past the baggage of the Old Year, that we can lift our eyes to the Cross, the open Tomb, and the Risen Savior who occupied them both, and that we can boldly march forward, strong in our confidence of the Providence of God, knowing that our struggles continually refine us, strengthen us, and educate us, leading us - in His time, not ours - to The Goal.

Happy New Year.