Making A Fresh Start

This is the day the Lord has made.  We will rejoice and be glad in it. (Psalm 118:24 NKJV)

How many times in the dysfunctional dark days of our addiction and life-without-God did we wake up and wish that we had not?  Life without God was tiresome.  Problems loomed large in front of us.  Circumstances were out of control.  We felt abandoned and unable to cope with another day of the same old stuff.  We wondered what it would take to stop the cycle.  At that time, God in His grace was drawing near to us and somehow, in the midst of our insanity, we decided to turn our will and our lives over to God as we understood Him.  As we made a fresh start we soon became aware that we could rejoice in each day that the Lord made.

I remember my affliction and my wandering, the bitterness and the gall.  I well remember them, and my soul is downcast within me.   Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope: Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail.  They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. (Lamentations 3:19-23 NIV)

We are still in the early days of this New Year and not one of us know how the year will end.  We are treading an unknown path as we go forward.  In a wartime speech King George VI included the following encouraging words in his Christmas broadcast: 

‘”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 a light and safer than a known way.’”

In these early weeks of 2015, with many unknown days before us, let’s determine to put our hand into the hand of God, follow Him in all His ways so we can find light in dark times and have many reasons to rejoice in each day.

©2015 Partners in Hope