Another year has passed and I still haven’t processed the one before it. I’m beginning to think life isn’t going to slow down so as we all try to get a handle on 2020, I want to recap my 2019 for you.
Over all, it was good but just between us, I attended too many funerals. I knew of too many people who walked away from their marriages and deeply wounded their families. I had too many loved ones diagnosed with illnesses they were unprepared for. I have too many friends, even at this moment, still awaiting test results. The year brought too many heartaches.
As I prayed on the last night of 2019, my mind wandered back to a little hotel room on December 31st, 1990. It was close to midnight. I was nineteen, staying in the room alone, and listening to the party going on down the hallway. They were having a great time but I was trying to prepare for my mother’s funeral the next day. I still remember the resentment I felt that life continued for some even though mine had seemed to come to an abrupt halt. The next morning, I met a stranger in the hallway who said those words that fell so short, “Happy New Year!”
Sometimes life isn’t very happy.
Instead of the usual, this year, I’d like to wish you a Holy New Year. My hope is that you’ll remain faithful to God in 2020 no matter what it holds. I hope you’ll decide to love Him in the midst of your own hurt. I hope you’ll love His broken, messy, sometimes misguided people, too. I hope you’ll forgive them for their faults and not let them keep you from Him. I hope you will refuse to buy in to the false sense of hopelessness that the world is selling. I hope you’ll speak words of faith and love and those will be heard by others who so desperately need them. I hope you’ll refuse to get sucked into the chaos of our society and instead spend your time serving the poor and marginalized. I hope you will use your places of privilege to seek justice for others less fortunate. I hope you’ll understand that your happiness can only be found in His Holiness. I hope you’ll accept the fact that there is no place you belong more than within the Kingdom of God. I hope you’ll know that the Creator who spoke the Universe into existence isn’t waiting for you to clean up your life before He’ll welcome you. And I hope that no matter how lost and alone you may feel you will come to know that God loves you with a love so powerful and eternal, nothing can separate you from it. I hope you’ll keep telling yourself that until you believe it even if it takes all year.
Decide now to let this year, regardless of its heartaches, be a holy year.