The Sharpening: Let God do something new
It’s the third day of the new year, as of this writing. Usually, on New Year’s Eve, I’d sit with my diary and pen my reflections for the year. What went well, what didn’t go so well. Where I went and who I went with. Would I return to that place or not? I’d write about getting another year older and how that made me feel. In Alice Dunbar-Nelson’s diary, “Give Us Each Day” she too expresses her emotions about getting older. On July 19, 1926, she wrote: “My birthday! 52 years old. Ye gods! Can you believe it? I feel about 32; look 42. So that’s serene….” The following year she writes: “My birthday! Fifty-three today. Feel much younger than when I was 33.” She is ecstatic about how she looks and feels in her fifties. And I too am excited about being a woman of a certain age, which is why I didn’t sit with my journal on December 31, 2018, and reflect about the year.
At this stage in my life, I’ve accomplished the majority of my goals and objectives. Goals being specific tasks and objectives is measurable results of those goals or something like that. The way I look at it, goals and objectives are interchangeable. I’m not entering the new year with the firm resolutions to do this or to do that. And for me, the planner, scheduler, organizer, goal-oriented, deadline driven person this is a significant feat. The only plans I have for the new year is to live, love, and laugh. I’m not planning because my calendar is already full with big events taking place during March, May, July, and August. I’m not expecting and setting goals because I want to make room for God to work. I want to make room in my life so when God says move, I can’t look at my task list and think twice about what he has asked me to do. I want to just go. I want to be free of my own agenda.
I am not making plans for the new year, because Isaiah 43:18-19, tells me God is “about to do something new” in my life. Yours, too. He’s already begun. Do you see it? Do you perceive it? Don’t you recognize it! Those verses tell us to forget the past, the former things, “forget about what happened; don’t keep going over old history.” I can obsess about what I did and did not do; how I could have made better choices and what if I did this or that. But the Word of God commands me to stop lamenting about the past and look at the new things God is doing. I must be alert, be present, you must be alert, be present otherwise we will miss “something brand-new” that’s bursting out, springing forth in our life.
I don’t want to miss it, so for the new year, I’m making room for God to do something brand new because I already see it.
Until Next time,
Happy New Year.