I'm so boring. It's New Years Eve and I'm not at a party reveling, not even watching the hoopla of Times Square, but passing it listening to the somulant strains of The Innocence Mission's 2000 EP entitled Christ Is My Hope. This collection of strummed hymns and originals seems of appropriate weight for reflection, saving me from making too much of the moment or too little. Nothing much, after all, will change with the passing of the hour. And yet so much can happen in the space of one year. Hearing these hushed hymns reminds me that some things don't change, that God does not change, that sin and need are in all generations and faith, hope, and love line the walk of life right out to its horizon. Charles Spurgeon used just that image of "looking down the long aisles of your years, at the green boughs of mercy overhead, and the strong pillars of lovingkindness and faithfulness which bears up your joys" to encourage his parishioners. And so it encourages me.
The Psalmist says "The years of our life are seventy,/ or even by reason of strength eighty;/ yet their span is but toil and trouble;/ they are soon gone, and we fly away" (Ps. 90:10). And later, "teach us to number our days/ that we may get a heart of wisdom. And so, maybe it is appropriate to stop and reflect, to consider what was and what may be.
This year my son will graduate from high school and leave home, and that will be the hinge of a door opening leaf of a book turning that will mark time's passing. This year my mother whose body and mind are giving way to the years will leave her home and enter a nursing home where she will most likely live out the rest of her days, bringing to an end a chapter of life but opening up new chapters as well. We fly away.
There is no guarantee that I will not face hardship, sickness, or even death this year, though I feel fine now and things seem to be going well. It's just that I have few guarantees. God does not promise me freedom from hardship, illness, injury, nor does He shield me from the peril of prosperity, of forgetting from whence all good gifts come. As I walked in the mornings this week I sometimes meditated on one line from Psalm 23: "I shall not want." I wondered what that could possibly mean, as I have known want and certainly Ugandan Christians I have known have experienced devastating want. "I shall not want." When it comes right down to it, the only promise I have for the new year is that God will be with me, is with me, whether feast or famine. That's everything that matters and yet to all who watch for the external nothing much to see. It's like the Psalmist said in beginning Psalm 90: "Lord, you have been our dwelling place in all generations."
When I walk tomorrow, I think I'll dwell on the last verse of Psalm 23, the one that says "I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever." The house may be ramshackle on the outside, but inside the fire is warm and the company divine. I could sit here and talk forever. Sometimes, like when you are with a good friend, you need not even talk but just sit in each others' presence. That's my hope for 2010: to dwell in God's house, to settle into residence, to quit trying to make the exterior look presentable and simply enjoy the hospitality of the Homemaker who gives rest to the weary. I want to live in Him. Don't you?
