Out with the old, in with the OLDER!
A wise friend once told me it’s hard to count your blessings when you don’t know what they are…
As I read the many criticisms, laments and good-riddance’s of 2021 on social media, I wonder if, in contrast, it may have been one of the greatest years of our lives…a turning point, not forward, but back to the things that matter most. Through the struggles and disappointments, the curtain was pulled aside and many of life’s deceptions were exposed and its crooked paths revealed, setting the essential clearly apart from the non-essential.
Beyond the fear, worry, and despair, where did the events of 2021 take us? For many, the answer was toward family, faith, charity, and service. Toward kindness, sacrifice, and simplicity…values of the past so easily forgotten in an unchallenged pursuit of ease and entitlement.
More than silver linings, these were course corrections. Faith and trust over fear and despair. Conservation over consumption. Others before self. People before things. A return to God and to prayer. The comparisons are many and wonderfully liberating, for they remind us of what we may have compromised, undervalued, set aside, or forgotten, awaking us from the sleep of perpetual prosperity and contentment in which there is little real growth.
Nothing happens in this life that the Lord doesn’t turn to our good as ALL things give us useful experience. Often the more painful the trial, the more profound the learning.
Instead of frustration, I invite you to remember 2021 with gratitude, as a merciful wake-up call, a game-changer, a hard but valuable lesson from one who loves us enough to try us, and trusts us enough to choose the better part and return to those principles and values that settle and ground our lives in the ways that matter most.
Happy New Year!
TestifyofChrist
December-2021
