Have we forgotten what 2021 was like already? While I still have my 2021 calendar on my desk, the days and slots on my calendar for 2022 have already begun to fill up. Before we finally say our goodbyes to 2021, let us not forget what God has done in your life and in my life.
Yes, I know it’s already January 6th, but one more peek into the past will be good for us. What joys have we experience in 2021? On the other hand, what hardships have we gone through in 2021? What lessons have we learned from them? I trust that we have discovered something more of our God and Savior last year, that our relationship with Him has grown deeper. I believe that there are things that God taught us in 2021 that He wants us to carry into 2022 and for the rest of our lives.
For myself, I did a Greek to English translation putting the subject and verb at the beginning of the sentence for the Gospel of John. That was a challenge but I saw things that I didn’t realize before. It didn’t dawn on me that John 3:16 is not a sentence in itself, but only part of a sentence.
Additionally, Jesus said that My Father is at work and I am working. Hmm… God is at work! I thought that God rested on the 7th Day of creation. But Jesus declares that He does what the Father is doing. So, when we read the Gospels, you are reading about the Father’s work, not just Jesus’! But what about now? Is the Father working today? Even at this moment? I believe He is, for our God is sovereignly overseeing all things and is intimately involved in the details of our lives.
With my daughter-in-law’s colon cancer diagnosis, I have come to believe that God not only knows about her circumstances but is carefully and gently allowing this to enter her life and the life of her family. He is present in the details of what is happening. He is not just an observer. The question that came to me is this, “Can I ‘see’ the hand of God in the difficult circumstances and the heartbreaking details, and even in the answer of the smallest prayers that He has given to me and to my friends?”
As I have reflected on this, the answered prayers for finding an oncologist quickly, the scheduled medical exams and procedures that the first doctor ordered, the decision of my son to take his wife to MD Anderson for a second opinion and her emergency admittance to the hospital, the difficulty and delay in starting of her first chemotherapy treatment, the bowel movements that were needed every day due to a near obstruction which otherwise would need emergency surgery and delay her life saving treatments, etc. I see the hand of God in her life in view of the difficult circumstances that she is currently going through. It’s easy to talk about walking by faith, but eventually, there comes a time for the testing of that faith.
Don’t close 2021 until you and I have reviewed what God has been leading us through and has been teaching us. For if we don’t realize and appropriate the lessons of 2021, God may lead us through similar events in 2022 that we may benefit from those lessons He wants to teach us and the growth that He has planned for us.
I do wish each of you a very Happy New Year. Lord willing, I will be resuming my devotional thoughts in John.
-Kingston