Where Did My Year Go?

Did you start anything in January and here it is the end of the year, and you didn't get very far with your plans? I know the feeling. Obviously this photo is not a January photo. It's November and almost 10 months have gone by since my last post. Change. Make that plural: Changes. Too many. I like change that means "Hello." But, too many changes this year have involved "Goodbye." My one constant has been God, and He never leaves me nor forsakes me. AND, He constantly lets me have do-overs. Encourages them, in fact. So, as I have written here in this blog often: I begin again. I am also encouraged to know that Frank Laubach, whose letters I have been trying to follow in this blog, had huge gaps in his writing -- his 36 letters stretch between January 1930 and January 1932. I have 33 left, and there happen to be 33 days until Christmas. Yes, I am going to try to write one a day during this Advent season.

I feel simply carried along each hour, doing my part in a plan which is far beyond myself. This sense of cooperation with God in little things is what so astonishes me, for I never have felt it this way before. I need something, and turn around to find it waiting for me. I must work, to be sure, but there is God working along with me. (Laubach)

What I love about Laubach's "plan" to be with God is that it simply involves talking with God doing whatever I am doing: washing dishes, tutoring, playing with grandchildren...

After a rather depressing yesterday, I woke up this morning ready to tackle this blog again. I went to go look up the password which I had written down in Oswald Chambers' book My Utmost for His Highest. This thought came to mind: Check out November 22. I needed something, and turned around "to find it waiting for me."

Beware of allowing yourself to think that the shallow concerns of life are not ordained of God; they are as much of God as the profound...To be shallow is not a sign of being wicked, nor is shallowness a sign that there are no deeps: the ocean has a shore. The shallow amenities of life, eating and drinking walking and talking, are all ordained by God. These are the things in which Our Lord lived. He lived them as the Son of God, and He said that "the disciple is not above his Master." (Chambers)

I desire to remember Laubach's closing words on this day: "My part is to live this hour in continuous inner conversation with God and in perfect responsiveness to His will, to make this hour gloriously rich." In eating, drinking, walking, talking, playing, praying, loving, following Jesus.