Last Year . . . Next Year

[Dan Crawford]

The last hours of a year are always a mixture of looking back and looking forward. What Ralph Waldo Emerson said about a past and future day, could well be applied to a completed and coming year: “Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could; some blunders and absurdities have crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; you shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.” The Apostle Paul said it this way: “Forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 3:13-14). So mix your New Year’s Resolutions with some of last year’s memories and let’s pray our way into the new year. Published in 1908, the following poem by Minnie Louise Haskins, is appropriate: “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 light and safer than a known way.’”

For more from Dr. Dan Crawford check his blog site at www.discipleallnations.org/blog.