What God can do in the blink of time...... known as 2016.

On the eve of the coming year I sit and contemplate not the day, the night, the week or the month.  I look back across the gulf that was the last year. I recall the excitement of a year ago knowing my goal was to read my Bible through in the year to come. I look and laugh at the innocent mistake of misreading a weekly reading chart as a daily chart and being a week in before I knew I could and would read my Bible through in about 7 weeks with a second reading of the New Testament thrown in for good measure and continuing on thus the rest of the year, with new versions. Yay for me, and the glory of my accomplishment, I was oozing pride and arrogance, I extolled my accomplishment to one and all, whoever would listen was my victim.  I loved having done it and I thrived on the power of it all, MY GLORY, MY GOAL, MY, MY, MY!!! Where was God in my accomplishment was God's glory in it at all?? The more I read the more I wanted to read, was it the pride, was it the glory of just doing it or maybe just maybe was there something more?

I thought, and realized I had actually overcome one of my fears of a long held paralysis of not reading because of an addiction I have had for a long time. I was reading for hours in a book I couldn't put down.  I was reading each new version with the zeal I had once only given to "evil books" novels I no longer had be a victim to. I was embracing my first love, God, and he had given me back one of my first loves, reading.  I literally read for hours again this year reading in all my spare moments, not the moments I had once stolen from someone, who needed me, not the stolen moments I had given to the "evil books"I once read.  I don't even really mean that the books I once read were evil it was what I let them do to me, my life, and my families life that was actually evil.  No, addiction to reading with no regard to the cost of others is an addiction, so no laughing at the thought that reading is an addiction because I am here to tell you it is and it can be devastating just like any other addiction can be.... I digress. I never will go back to the addiction of the "books" but now I can embrace the renewed found passion for reading because I gave it to God, he has blessed my love of reading and has remade it into something for his Glory. I truly don't think I will ever tire of seeing God daily in the reading of his Word.  I have many to read so little time to do it well, maybe not, I might just have all of eternity to enjoy them....

I look back on the many other things this past year brought. Two jobs, I love, that give me back such fulfillment. Both I can see as God will for me. I can see them as jobs that bring me such moments of accomplishment and it matters not what others think of either of them. I am at an age that impressing people matters not to me but doing the Lords work where ever he asks me to serve is a joy untold.  I have at God's bidding made sure to do things of kindness for people, even those who do not like me, because what would be the Glory to God if I only did a kindness for my friends and family, any one does that. God loves all mankind and any one I do a kindness for is someone God loves and made in his image, so anyone deserves my kindness.  Poppy and I made sure to take on a commitment to God in the form of someone we don't know and we honor our vow to God on this matter.

I get to see my littles grow in the light of God, love my grands and get enough from our lives to see that they get a little extra from the income my jobs provide. The funny think about reading, and reading, the Bible is some of the concepts eventually start to become part of my thoughts, and actions. The more I read the more I know God doesn't want me trying to desperately try to figure this thing called life on my own, but he wants me to love him and he wants me to depend on him to take care of me. I think realizing, and really believing and doing it, are really what he wants the most from us. I read and so many, many things jump off the page each time the page has something new of great loving kindness from God to say to me.  I have really tried to really, really read what the Bible says and not what someone says it says.  I can't explain how truly diving  into my Bible has brought out threads that weave through the Bible that I think you can only see if you give God the time to show you where they go and where he wants you to go in his word.....

I have learned that loving God is first and for most, loving your neighbor is second. Hospitality and Mercy are so much more important than the sins that we commit in our failures to God. Because God's mercy is sufficient for all mankind and through him nothing is impossible for him to accomplish.... if we but ask it of him in love, for his desire is for us to love him.

I have changed so very much, inside, this year and God has only just started shaping me to his desire and all I have to do is believe, read, obey and let him show me how he cares for me, where he wants me to go and I can't wait for what is to come...... So here is to a year well spent, a year I will forever embrace and the joy of looking into eternity with awe at just what is to come next, this year, this millennium and what is to come in the beyond... tomorrow.