Happy New Year, everyone! This is the year that the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it.

There was great satisfaction in pulling the plastic off my new family planner and cracking it open. I’m generally a future-focused person but doesn’t it feel especially good to leave 2020 behind and move forward into a new year?! In many ways, 2020 seemed like the year I want to tuck away into the bottom of a drawer and forget about. Yet this Christmas break, with the deadline of an expiring Shutterfly coupon, I sat down behind the computer and put together our 2020 family album and was powerfully reminded that it wasn’t “all bad.”

From Snow Days To Bike Rides

Making the photo album was a task I’d been putting off. With all the screen time of zoom meetings, emails, family Facetime, and virtual church this year, I couldn’t bear to spend more time behind the computer during the time away from work.

But perhaps it was more than just avoiding a task. God knew that I needed to take some time during the last few days of the year to go through our pictures and remember the moments of 2020 and recognize that it was also the year that the Lord had made. There were good and wonderful things for us to rejoice and be glad in. Snow days, camping trips, a new trampoline, visits with my sister at the Peace Arch Park, watching our son learn how to ride his bike, boating trips with the cousins, a new job, birthdays, walks around Willband creek, good health, and a peaceful Christmas.

A Fridge Reminder

God reminded me that His creation is worthy of redemption, even 2020. I won’t tuck this year away at the bottom of a drawer after all. Instead, the year of our Lord, 2020, with all its memories—good and bad, will go just where it should; in between 2019 and 2021, a part of the ongoing story of God and His people.

I came across this poem by Howard Thurman that I think I’ll hang on my fridge for a while. It’s a powerful reminder that He is our God, and we are His people. Regardless of the circumstances at the time, we are living a redemption story in which we faithfully keep doing what God requires of us, “to act justly, and to love mercy and to walk humbly with our God.” Micah 6:8

The Work of Christmas

When the song of the angels is stilled,

When the star in the sky is gone,

When the kings and princes are home,

When the shepherds are back with their flock,

The work of Christmas begins:

To find the lost,

To heal the broken,

To feed the hungry,

To release the prisoner,

To rebuild the nations,

To bring peace among others,

To make music in the heart.