New Year–I love the sound of that, don’t you?  A New Year…365 days stretching out before us….blank open spaces waiting to be filled.  New Year is a time for possibility.  New Year is a time for dreams.  New Year brings hope–hope for new directions, hope for positive changes, hope that we can live into the person we so desire to be.  New Year….

When I think about what I hope to accomplish in this New Year, there are some very definitive goals that I have in mind.  However, I often find that God has a way of rearranging the goals that I make.  As my family and I were watching the New Year’s Eve festivities on TV, there was a countdown of the top musical performances of 2012.  One of the performances was a song sung by Beyonce at a UN function.  The song was titled, “I Was Here”.  I’m including a link to the performance if you’d like to see it.  It was very moving.

As I watched the performance, I found myself thinking, this is what I want to do in my life.  I want to live my life in a way that people know I was here.  As I pondered on that the next couple of days, however, I found myself thinking beyond I was here.  As I look around our messy, broken, hurting world the thing that I really want to do is to live in a way that shows not that I was here, but that God IS here!!

This New Year, I want to bring hope to those who are hopeless, but not from me, from the One who restores all hope.  This New Year, I want to show love to others–not my frail, wavering, dependent love, but the Love that came into the world to Redeem.  This New Year, I want to focus on letting God’s light shine through me–through my work and my relationships and my activities and my words.

In the grand scheme of things, it doesn’t matter much that I was here, but rather, that I allowed God to be here through me.  I’m excited about the possibilities of this New Year.  I’m excited to see where God may lead.  But most of all, I am grateful that God is willing to let me go with Him.

Blessings and Peace,
Sara