New Year’s Meditations

But the land, whither ye go to possess it, is a land of hills and valleys, and drinketh water of the rain of heaven: A land which the LORD thy God careth for: the eyes of the LORD thy God are always upon it, from the beginning of the year even unto the end of the year. Deuteronomy 11:11-12.

I seem to start each new year with those verses. but I like to think of them in that way: that whatever “hills” and “valleys” the new year may bring, the Lord will be with us and take care of us.

Laurel Wreath is hosting a New Year’s Meditation Carnival, where she invites us to post our hopes, dreams, desires, and goals for the New Year (and she’s even awarding one participant a $25 gift certificate from Amazon.com.)

My friend Susan at By Grace posted several days ago about making goals instead of resolutions and examining every area of our lives to see what we need to work on. I’d like to use that format.

• Spiritual: To “keep on keeping on,” to stay in the Word to be more attuned to the Holy Spirit’s prompting and more obedient more quickly..

• Physical: I don’t want to just say generally “I need to lose weight” though I seriously do. But for specific goals I want need to go back to tracking what I eat through SparkPeople — that in itself curbs a lot of intake, plus educates and motivates — and either walk or use my low-impact aerobic video at least three times a week.

• Marriage: I need to be more willing to lay aside what I am doing to focus on my husband. I tend to feel “interrupted” and need to remember that he is my priority.

• Children: To pray every day for them especially as two are on the threshold of leaving the nest; to seek specific ways God would have me minister to them.

• Homemaking: To get those curtains made!! To get back into planning meals. To make a master-list for grocery shopping to hopefully help me remember things so I don’t have to make multiple trips by the store each week.

• Creativity: I want to organize my supplies so it is easier to work on a project and find what I need. I want to explore some ideas I’ve been toying with for an Etsy shop. I want to make time for some “serious” writing.

• Ministry: I want to make up a questionnaire for the ladies concerning our group and what things they’d like to see us do. I want to be more faithful: I’m ashamed to say I’ve gotten distracted and begun some projects/events very late. God helped and blessed after prayer and repentance, but I want to handle these things better. I think I have also about decided to pass on the tract ministry to someone else — ordering tracts and making labels with the church contact information and sticking them on each tract. I have been thinking since Jim’s mom came that I need to pare down somewhere, and this is a pretty self-contained ministry that someone else could easily do.

We have a big year ahead with the college graduation and wedding of our middle son, another son just on the verge of leaving the nest, another learning to drive, along with the usual events of the year and whatever unknowns it may bring. We’ll have the adjustments of a new president who is very personable, likable, and inspirational, but who had views I strongly disagree with.

One of my deepest desires is that some (preferably all!) of my lost loved ones would be saved. My prayer for all of us can be summed up in three of Paul’s prayers:

Ephesians 3:14-19: “For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, Of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, That he would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man; That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, May be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; And to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God.”

Colossians 1:9-12: “For this cause we also, since the day we heard it, do not cease to pray for you, and to desire that ye might be filled with the knowledge of his will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding; That ye might walk worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing, being fruitful in every good work, and increasing in the knowledge of God; Strengthened with all might, according to his glorious power, unto all patience and longsuffering with joyfulness; Giving thanks unto the Father, which hath made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light…”

Philippians 1:9-11: “And this I pray, that your love may abound yet more and more in knowledge and in all judgment; That ye may approve things that are excellent; that ye may be sincere and without offence till the day of Christ, Being filled with the fruits of righteousness, which are by Jesus Christ, unto the glory and praise of God.”