Last Day of 2008

Even after spending up to midnight yesterday cleaning up this site, setting up Wordplay (for 2009!) and my brother’s website, I woke up almost in time today, off by an hour on my alarm. Heh, snooze buttons are evil, I tell you! But at least I don’t feel like my day is going to be wasted. :) I hope I can keep this up for the next year.

It turns out I won’t be spending New Year at home but at the condo, where we’ll be able to watch fireworks and such at the rooftop. This means I can go to the gym tomorrow morning (yeeees I’m turning over a new leaf — start early!), but it also means the midnight introspection and long prayer/journal times that I do literally at the start of the new year (as in 12 midnight) won’t be done in the privacy of my bedroom. But it’s okay. That only means I have to get creative.

Honestly, I feel kind of bad because I did not get to finish everything I listed here. I might be able to cross out two more from the list there…but the others will just have to be finished by next year, or at least, before I go back to work on Monday. And speaking of which…I still don’t feel like going back to work on Monday. Who’s with me? But, like everyone always say at the end of vacations: time to face reality. Then again, not yet. ;)

I’m rambling, I know. I may not be able to post again until tomorrow, where the year officially ends in 9 (at least in my timezone that is), and a new year and month will be added in my archives down there…so let me share the last reflection from Oswald Chambers’ My Utmost For His Highest. I hardly read this one this year, but I always liked the reading for the last year. No matter how blah and apprehensive I feel about the upcoming year because of all its challenges, somehow this brings me comfort because of the truth it carries. So I leave you with this reflection as the last hours of 2008 tick by (did I say that right?).

YESTERDAY
December 31
My Utmost for His Highest by Oswald Chambers

“You shall not go out with haste…for the Lord will go before you, and the God of Israel will be your rear guard.” (Isaiah 52:12)

Security from Yesterday. “…God requires an account of what is past” (Ecclesiastes 3:15). At the end of the year we turn with eagerness to all that God has for the future and yet anxiety is apt to arise when we remember our yesterdays. Our present enjoyment of God’s grace tends to be lessened by the memory of yesterday’s sins and blunders. But God is the God of our yesterdays, and He allows the memory of them to turn the past into a ministry of spiritual growth for our future. God reminds us of the past to protect us from a very shallow security in the present.

Security for Tomorrow. “…the Lord will go before you…” This is a gracious revelation — that God will send His forces out where we have failed to do so. He will keep watch so that we will not be tripped up again by the same failures, as would undoubtedly happen if He were not our “rear guard.” And God’s hand reaches back to the past, settling all the claims against our conscience.

Security for Today. “You shall not go out with haste…” As we go forth into the coming year, let it not be in the haste of impetuous, forgetful delight, nor with the quickness of impulsive thoughtlessness. But let us go out with the patient power of knowing that the God of Israel will go before us. Our yesterdays hold broken and irreversible things for us. It is true tha we have lost opportunities that will never return, but God can transform this destructive anxiety into a constructive thoughtfulness for the future. Let the past res, but let it rest in the sweet embrace of Christ.

Leave the broken, irreversible past in His hands, and step out into the invincible future with Him.

Goodbye soon, 2008. Hello, 2009. I hope I’m ready for you. :)