Upheld In A Fresh Start

Pristine

A new year usually means a fresh start to most of us. Like a fresh snowfall – it is clean and pristine. Like the frosty trees against a golden sunny blue sky—it’s sharp and crisp.

We shake off disappointments, lost opportunities, failed projects and determine to start with a brand-new, unmarked slate-er-screen (clichés must be updated).

Some of us look back with great satisfaction. We think: “Job well done.” And we rejoice over our accomplishments. This is good.

Now, we look forward to this New Year, as yet unwritten. We make resolutions, write goals and plans. I have pages of these and I update them every January, and I just did them for 2017. Most of these goals can’t be accomplished in a year—more like a lifetime. I can’t seem to understand that I am not superwoman. Even so!

Truth for the New Year

But I would like to set aside goals and resolutions for now to concentrate on what God would be saying to us to start a new year.

I read Psalm 32, verses 5-7, over New Year weekend, and found some wonderful truths:

1. As I confess my sin to the Lord, He forgives it.
2. When I pray to Him, He will be found.
3. Times of great waters will not flood over me.
4. He is my Hiding Place
5. He will preserve me from trouble
6. He surrounds me with songs of deliverance.

Believing

God, our Father, is so gracious to us. He forgives us, then washes away the tears. He invites us to come in out of the winter cold and into His warm presence. There we are protected from the harm of howling winds and blowing snows of life. And we don’t even have to shovel berms!

Finally—He sings songs over us of safety and peace!

We are loved. We are humbled. Because this is God, our Father’s, response when we confess our sins and come to Him for His freely given forgiveness.

Now we can turn our faces to the pristine white, blue and gold of a New Year.

“You are my hiding place; You shall preserve me from trouble; You shall surround me with songs of deliverance…Selah,” Psalm 32:7.