Nice and Not So Nice

Thursday 1/1/2015 6:01 AM

Today marks the beginning of 2015. I’ve stopped making resolutions but, at the beginning of each year, I stop to think about what the coming year might hold. This year I anticipate that, in a couple of months, I will become a grandfather for the sixth time, assuming things continue to go well for Ryan and Kate’s baby. Most of my thoughts are of positive things. I seldom think about what bad things may happen to me, or to those I love, throughout the year. For example, last year I never anticipated my mother’s fall, where she broke her hip, setting off many cascading events that ultimately resulted in her having to move from the house of my childhood into an assisted living care facility. While I recognize that bad things can happen during the coming year, there is really no way to anticipate or prepare for them.

My reading today includes Psalm 67:1-2. It seems to me that the psalmist might have written it at the beginning of a new year. “May God be gracious to us and bless us and make his face shine on us – so that you ways may be known on earth, your salvation among all nations.” The striking thing about these verses is that the psalmist desires God’s grace and blessing, not for his own benefit, but so that God’s ways could be known throughout the earth and that God’s salvation could be shared with all nations.

My reflections on the new year are pretty self-centered and self-serving. I do not always have the larger perspective of what God’s desire might be. My reading today also included John 3, where Jesus met with Nicodemus and told him that he had to be born again. In the course of their conversation Jesus said, “The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.” If I have the Spirit of God living within me he will take me to all kinds of places, some nice, some not so nice. The Spirit’s goal is not my comfort or my convenience, but the furthering of God’s kingdom and the molding of my character into the image of Christ. The good news is that, no matter the circumstances, nice or not so nice, God’s desires will be accomplished.

I pray that during the course of the coming year I will use both the nice and the not so nice things that come my way to display the ways of God to others. That is a resolution that only the Spirit of God working in me will be able to accomplish.