Last Year . . . Next Year

The last hours of a year are always a mixture of looking back and looking forward. What Ralph Waldo Emerson said about a past and future day, could well be applied to a completed and coming year: “Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could; some blunders and absurdities have crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; you shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.” The Apostle Paul said it this way: “Forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 3:13-14). So mix your New Year’s Resolutions with some of last year’s memories and let’s begin 2014. Published in 1908, the following poem by Minnie Louise Haskins, is appropriate: “I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year: ‘Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown.’ And he replied: ‘Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the Hand of God. That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way.’” Happy New Year!

Join me in praying for the following global concerns:
• Pray for Linda and Daniel that their temporary Macau ID cards will be approved, after being rejected recently.
• Pray for Peter and Olga as they conduct a Winter Camp in Orenburg, Russia for seventy people.
• Continue to pray for former Spain missionary Cathie and her family as she continues to battle with stage IV Metastatic Melanoma. You can follow her progress at http://www.standingwithcathieinhisgrip.blogspot.com/