Towards the end of each year, you can begin to see these pictures with someone jumping or dancing from a point marked with the current year to a point marked with the following year.
The people looked excited and thrilled to be starting a new adventure. After the year we have all had this year with pandemics, politics, and paranoia; I feel like an accurate picture for the transition from 2020 to 2021 would be a person crawling in desperation to reach a year promising to be better than this one.
As we reach that promised 2021, I fear that the dawn of a new year will not bring miraculous changes to our situations. Whether or not the new promised vaccines put an end to COVID once and for all, the world still had to say goodbye to far too many this year… far too early.
Whether or not the left and the right of politics finally meet somewhere in the middle, our nations are all drifting farther and farther from God. Yet, even though we face uncertainty, we don’t have to live uncertain lives. Faith doesn’t worry about the ‘what-ifs’, it walks forward with a confident, ‘God can’.
Consider Psalm 30. This psalm, written for the dedication of the temple, was written by a man who would never see the construction in his lifetime. This song was sung years later by exiles after Jerusalem was utterly destroyed in their anticipation of their return to and rebuilding of their beloved city. This psalm was then later sung by the Macabbees as they lived oppressed and yet looked forward in faith to a day when they would regain their independence.
This psalm encourages its listeners to “Sing to the Lord, you saints of His; praise His holy name. For His anger lasts only a moment, but His favor lasts a lifetime; weeping may remain for a night, but rejoicing comes in the morning.” (Psalm 30:4-5) No matter how you end 2020, God has your 2021 firmly in the palm of His hand.
We may not see our destination yet, but we can keep moving forward and sing praises to God because we know that God’s favor lasts a lifetime – even if life throws some stumbling blocks our way.
