New Year - New Season

I have always loved the changing of seasons, spring to summer, summer to fall.  There is something about entering into a new season that brings a hint of hope.  This weekend at church a video played with inspirational quotes to set our hearts right for the New Year.  This one I had to look up and read again:

I love word pictures.  They cause me to pause and wonder for awhile.  I don't know that I fully understand this quote, but something about it makes me want to sit awhile and think on last year and consider 2016.  

It is as if January 1st is a switch waiting to be flipped.  Out with the old and in with the new.  I sometimes wish this were true of May 18 or October 23 or any other random day of the year when I desire a new beginning.  

This is a new season, 2016.  I feel like I have this big eraser to wipe off last year's disappointments and failures and I can write down fresh hopes for the tomorrows of this year. What will be written on the pages of this year, what voice will emerge?

As I linger a little longer over 2015, past those regrets, I see God.  He is in the funerals and in the weddings. He is in the sicknesses and in the good health. He is in the lean times and in the times of abundance. He has answered thousands of prayers. I see Him more clearly than the year before.

I want to embrace all that the Lord has planned for this coming year. I am guessing He has planned some hard times sprinkled in among the mundane days and happy moments. It is all for our good and for His glory.  So this year, 2016, I commit to Hosea 6:3:

Let us know, let us press on to know the Lord; his going out is as sure as the dawn; he will come to us as the showers, as the spring rains that water the earth. 

When life gets hard, instead of flailing about, I will choose to press on.  And not in the "spin your wheels to exhaustion" pressing on, but by leaning in closer to know the Lord in the midst of my circumstances. All else will be worthless, rubbish, meaningless unless this is first. 

When January 1, 2017 rolls around I will rejoice once again in seeing the Lord even more clearly.  As the NIV translation of Hosea 6:3 says, "as surely as the sun rises, He will appear".  This is my promise, He will not fail me.  Here is to great expectations and renewed hope for 2016!