Christmas and the New Year are crashing in on us like a runaway locomotive! I can identify with Job 7:6 My days come and go swifter than the click of knitting needles, and then the yarn runs out—an unfinished life! When a year comes to its end we look back in retrospect and when someone you know dies, you begin to think about how they spent their life. C.T.Studd penned, “Only one life, ’twill soon be past, only what’s done for Christ will last. And when I am dying, how happy I’ll be, if the lamp of my life has been burned out for Thee.” We are all born with a clean slate, a life in front of us that has a chance to be something great, to make a difference in the world in which we live. If you did research on all the rich and famous people, you would find that a lot of them had to scratch their way up through a lot of adverse circumstances, we look at them and only see the success they are now. There was a day that such infamous people as Hitler, the pilots of the aircraft that slammed into the Twin Towers at the World Trade Center, or mass murderer Charles Manson were tiny babies in a mother’s arms. What happened to twist them into tormentors? Who has the answer to that? You can blame a parent, or the lack of one, but after a point how we live our life becomes our personal responsibility.
Psalm 139:13-15 Oh yes, you shaped me first inside, then out; you formed me in my mother’s womb. I thank you, High God—you’re breathtaking! Body and soul, I am marvelously made! I worship in adoration—what a creation! You know me inside and out, you know every bone in my body; You know exactly how I was made, bit-by-bit, how I was sculpted from nothing into something. Like an open book, you watched me grow from conception to birth; all the stages of my life were spread out before you, the days of my life all prepared before I’d even lived one day. What a beautiful revelation, and declaration, from the Psalmist of how God is aware of us. Things happen to us that we cannot help, it is after we come to a knowledge of what the baggage we are carrying really is that we can choose to put it down or carry it with us for the rest of our lives and use it as a crutch to live miserably. Forgiveness of the people who have brought us harm and unhappiness is for you not that person. To continue being bitter is like taking great gulps from a mug of poison because you are thirsty! Who do you harm? I know it isn’t easy but you have a helper, Isaiah 41:10 ‘You’re my servant, serving on my side. I’ve picked you. I haven’t dropped you.’ Don’t panic. I’m with you. There’s no need to fear for I’m your God. I’ll give you strength. I’ll help you. I’ll hold you steady; keep a firm grip on you.
If you are looking for someone to give you a helping hand, the person you turn to may be looking for the same thing! Gloria Gaither penned a song that says, “If there ever were dreams that were lofty and noble, they were your dreams at the start, and the hope for life’s best are the hopes that we harbor, down deep in our heart, but then your dreams turn to ashes, your castles all crumble, your fortune turns to loss, Wrap it all, in the rags of your life, and lay them at the Cross. Let Christ make something beautiful of your life!”
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