New Year, New Mindset

A new year is a blank canvas begging to be filled with beauty.

As the beginning of this year is still fresh on our lips, my mind is busy pondering vision and purpose for the 365 days that lie ahead. There are countless possibilities and endless amounts of dreams to be imagined, yet my heart is eerily still…calm…hopeful, but not undone with objectives.

I am an objective oriented and goal minded gal by nature but I am finding myself postured differently in these days of new. With a busy mind that is always filled with a plan, it is necessary for me to focus on being present.

The present is the gift of now which is always a gift of new…moments that have been untouched by humanity and simply held in eternity by the most caring and gracious God.

If what you’re seeking in 2019 is something new, then pursue the gift of now.

Each moment that unfolds is brand new, a time and space that has never before existed and is a gift to be held. It’s as though God is handing us one thought provoking, divinely planned moment at a time and saying “I am about to do something new. I have already begun! Do you not see it?” (Isaiah 43:19)

We often beg for glimpses into the future before we have learned to steward what is already in our hands. We are quick to seek the more, the next, the best…that we are escaping the gift that has already been given. So, I urge you (and me) to open eyes wide in order to see the grace and the love and the majesty and the wonder and the beauty of now, because it is the something new.

What moments will we treasure and what will mark our lives on this trip around the sun?

There will be trial and triumph, joy and sorrow, mourning and dancing, reaping and sowing, giving and receiving….and every bit of it is grace given to us by a Father who loves us beyond. So choose to see all of it as grace and love and hope and evidence of the realness of this life that we get to live for only a short moment in the span of eternity.

Store up the simple, non-exemplary, modest moments of existence where the weight of your humanity can be felt in the weariness of your bones. Hold the one who cries and shout with the one who wins. Shoulder the burden of friends and applaud the victory of adversaries. Choose to feel whatever comes your way in trust that it has first traveled through the hands of the One who loves you most, who loves you best. Choose to embrace the limitation of this life in anticipation of the eternal which can never be held or measured by any standard in this world.

Choose to see the now instead of seek the new…because the NOW is the NEW that has graciously been given.

If you live FOR tomorrow or IN tomorrow, you will only find yourself robbed of what could have been because you miss what is and what already was.

This year, I will choose to abide and invite you to do so with me.

Let us abide in the Father by acknowledging His endless presence with us as we carry Him courageously into a world that is desperate for Him. Let us abide in the moments that He grants us breath and receive them in their fullness…full of beauty, full of mess. Abide in the relationships that He is using to refine us and spur us towards the purposes and plans that He has ordained for our lives. Abide in the process of becoming that which He has destined us to be. Abide in the truth of His promises and the steadfastness of His love.

Abide in the now with your hope set in Him and your eyes fixed firmly on the One who never waivers.

Abide in the now to discover the new.

 © Dani Hardy (January 2, 2019)