So, it’s here.
Here, and two minutes close to ending…
This last day of the year 2023.
I find it interesting how we put so much emphasis on the ending of an old year, and welcome the new year with so many emotions… when what really changes in life from 11:59 to 12:00?
Yet, imagine if life was one endless rolling span of time with no way to measure it.
I am so grateful that God created time for us, because He knew we would need those milestones.
It’s a way of sorting life into chapters, actually. Or little hardcover books, that together compile an entire set of volumes which tell a person’s life story.
New Years Day is like the beautiful cover of an empty book. Everything the year holds then goes into it page by page, and December 31 closes the back cover, completing that part of the journey.
(If my comparison of a year to a book seems odd, I apologize… it makes sense to me, but that’s probably because I’m a writer at heart and love all things that contain words, so… books, yes. Also, writers are known to be a rather fanciful, imaginative sort, and therefore may draw far fetched comparisons. Enough said on that bunny trail…)
The covers of a book really don’t tell you what it contains, yet they influence you to decide if it’s worthwhile reading or not.
You don’t know when you start reading what direction the story will go to end up at the last page.
Likewise, the first and last day of a year don’t reveal many details of the events within the year – yet when you compare just those two days, they reveal what kind of year you just lived.
On January 1st, 2023, I was joyful, loving life.
December 31, 2023, I am still joyful. But oh, so much more intensely alive!
The covers of the book don’t reveal all the steps of the journey I walked between them – but the difference from one to the other shows a good year, a year of growth a year to praise God for.
They say you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, and I respect that.
But when it comes to evaluating the year… I’d rather like to judge by the progress made from one cover to the other.
I could jump into the middle of March, or June, or September, and I’d only have pieces of the story.
I could compare the tears I cried with the number of times I sang for joy at the top of my voice, and decide by that… but it might not be accurate.
What if, even in times of turmoil, God is doing so much good in us that we can’t help but call the story good?
And if the entire year was joyful and easy, would I have been challenged to grow? And if not, how sad, to have lived a whole year with so little accomplished.
I prefer to judge my year by the front and back cover: What was my prayer when I entered 2023, and could I see God’s answer by the last day?
…Oh, YES.
This year, I hoped to blossom. Today, I know I have. It doesn’t matter that the pages of the story don’t hold what I expected them to on January 1st, what matters is that God was faithful to answer my prayer – in His way, but always faithful.
And if God is faithful, God is good… and any year that shows His goodness is a story that was worth the living!
So as I close the cover of 2023, forever sealing into that book every moment I lived within its pages, I place it on the shelf of years gone by with peace in my heart.
It’s not a volume I need to bury, or wish I could remove from the set. I lived it with God at my side and His faithfulness is written into every line, making it a good year. It’s a year I would not change or redo – I am ready for the new year, but I value the place 2023 holds in my life story.
So I place it in it’s worthy position on the shelf, where God asks me to lay it down in the section marked “Past,” and I turn to accept the new book He offers.
This one is blank. It’s called 2024. I trust God to make it beautiful in whatever way He chooses.
Blessings to you all as you open the cover of a new book… let God write the story and you will find 2024 to be another year of experiencing His goodness!
Notes from My Heartsong 