I originally wrote this in 2020. It’s now 2025. . .it still holds true.
It’s just after dawn on New Year’s Eve day and I have just returned from dropping my wife and daughter off at a race where they will run a 5k followed by a half (daughter) or full marathon (wife). Waking up before light with the focus of getting them where they need to be has put me in a pensive mood.
Here we are at the end of 2020. It’s been a year of struggle for many, our family included. There have been fears about health, finances, and politics. Unfortunately, with the end of 2020, we won’t see the end of those concerns.
It would be easy to just be scared all of the time. If I was a regular viewer of the news media, it would be very easy to become afraid of all the calamity.
You have probably heard the expression from Franklin Roosevelt, America’s 32nd president, that the “only thing to fear is fear itself.” I like the fuller statement of the sentence from which that comes: “. . . let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself–nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.” Sounds like a wake up call for today.
Because we are His, we don’t have to live in fear. Will we face trials? YES!!! (See John 16:33) However, our Overcomer covers us and cares for us despite these trials and troubles. In the midst of the fear, trials, troubles, and pain, God is not only on our side but is working out the situations for our good.
In a conversation with a friend yesterday, he commented that it’s his hope that everything going on in the world today would almost drive the institutional church underground to purify it. That mindset alone, might frighten some. However, when you have the opportunity to be refined by God, always take it. Let His refining process have its way in you. It will remove the bad and unimportant.
So, putting aside the turmoil and fear, I’m looking forward to 2021. . .not as an end to everything around me, not with the thought of “I hated 2020,” but with the focus of letting God refine me and drawing me closer to Him. I want to learn to reach out, in every moment, to my King and live the life He has for me to live.
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