Replacing Pins

Yesterday was the day that a freshly painted door was opened and a squeaky rotten door was closed. I’m so grateful that 2016 is over – it behaved so badly. I cannot throw out that old door because it served a purpose for ’16 – the gradual transformation of my heart. You see, the old door is battered, peeling and rotten because of the war waged upon it. The war between the earthly and the spiritual…the devastation and the remarkable …the despair and t...he exhilaration. It was the door that shut in old thinking patterns…old motivations… old behaviors…old fears. As the door began to creak and become warped I realized that its work had been done, and it was safe to replace it with the new door – 2017. I have confidence in this exchange because of nothing I have done but everything that God is doing.

‘We live in the tension of victories already won and victories to come. We must believe in miracles but not demand them. We yield to the patient work of the Spirit in regenerating our hearts but need to trust His unforeseeable timing…we too often close our eyes to the small but miraculous change happening around us…we miss the glimpses of heaven in our own lives. We are not who we should be, but we are also not who we once were…God will perform His acts of gradual restoration in us, in the deepest and most sinful recesses of the heart we know best – our own. This grace won’t make the storms go away, but it will remind us of the One who leads us through them’ The Glory We Don’t See, Daniel Darling.

I saw glimpses of Heaven in 2016. I wouldn’t trade the heart work done for anything this world could offer. I know that restoration is progressive and cumulative, one deep work built upon the other. I know that whatever I face in ’17 I can boldly say, ‘God can do this. God is doing this. God has done this!’ Isn’t hope always better than despair? Isn’t confidence in God more enduring than confidence in this world? As I reverently and purposefully remove the pins out of 2016 that held it in place, and slide the pins into place for 2017 I will trust that all is the way it is meant to be according to His plan.

“Blessed is she [he] who has believed that the Lord would fulfill his promises to her!” Luke 1:45.