Monday, January 6, 2014

beginnings



My husband made the most beautiful coffee table for our living room. Unfortunately, you can barely see it underneath all my books and notebooks and journals and planners, all strategically placed withing reach for the upcoming year. Few things excite me more than a stack of blank notebooks.

I can't tell you how much I love the idea of a fresh start every year (or season or week.) I love newness - a newly organized closet, a new go-to Winter outfit, a new page.

And yet after I purge my closet and line up my new notebooks and think happy thoughts of the year to come, I wonder if maybe I'm being a bit silly. This "fresh start" talk, is it even real? Is this just one of those things we humans make up to feel like our lives are actually going in a specific direction as opposed to wandering aimlessly?

One of my goals for the new year was to read straight through the Bible. I was only on the first page of Genesis the other day when a verse struck me: "And God said, 'Let there be lights in the expanse of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as signs to mark seasons and days and years...'" (Genesis 1:14)

Seasons were part of God's original design for a perfect creation. I've never thought about that before.

For some reason, I think of change and seasons as a result of the fall of mankind, as a sort of plan B. Change, isn't that so often seen as a bad thing? But even before sin ever entered the world, God planned for us to go through seasons, literal and figurative. We were never meant to live static lives, even in Eden.

God doesn't roll his eyes when I get excited for a fresh start. A brand new year is his idea, his plan for us. This goal setting, this dreaming and planning - it's not in our heads. This fresh start we've been given is not only real, it's been given to us by God. And that's all the encouragement I need to dream big for the year ahead.










10 comments:

  1. So well said! I've often thought about this myself as the long winters wear on He gave us time to slow down, reboot, and refresh. The physical seasons each have their own impact and really several times to start over in the year.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I've never thought of seasonal change as a blessing embedded in Eden before. What a beautiful thought.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I love this! I have never thought of it this way.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Beautifully written.
    He really does make all things new.

    ReplyDelete
  5. A beautiful thought. Thank you for pointing that out. I am very glad to have found your blog via Becky Higgins' site. :)

    ReplyDelete
  6. Really, really love your analogy. It makes perfect sense :) Seasons and changes are true and beautiful and full of hope.

    ReplyDelete
  7. I love this perspective, Heather. I think, too, beginnings are part of God's design, and that's so appropriate; after all, it's He who gives us the most critical one, the moment we say yes to Him for the first time, the start to living a life the same way.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Wow, I never looked at it that way and I love how you said it. God, such a mysterious man (: I get so excited every times you post, H! Beautifully written.

    ReplyDelete
  9. This is so well put! Such a blessing to know that God is the one who arranged for seasons and changes!

    ReplyDelete

Thanks for reading! I reply to comments via email, so make sure you're not a no-reply blogger! xo

 
T I C K L E D Y E L L O W © 2013.

Design by The Blog Boat