I do, indeed, wish all readers of this blog a happy New Year. I pray that you will be blessed greatly by God and that he will bring about his purposes in your life this year. I pray that you will get to know him and understand him more over the coming months. I pray that for myself as well. I want to look back over 2021 in twelve months time and know that I have fallen more deeply in love with Jesus and learned to live more like him, that I have come to know and understand his ways better and that I am filled with the Holy Spirit more than I was at the start of this year. I pray that that will be your experience as well.
Do I pray that you will be happy all year, though? Maybe some of you will be, and I shall rejoice with you if that is the case. However, in practice, for most of us every year has ups and downs, however close we might be living to God. We can learn to be thankful in the good times and the bad, and praise God in all circumstances. We can learn that there is a joy and a peace to be found in him that is not shaken by whatever is going on around us and in us.
However, sometimes things make us sad. Exam results can occasionally not be what we hoped or expected. House moves can fall through. Our greatly loved pets have a habit of dying after lives that seem too short. Friends and relatives can become ill and even die as well. At such times is it OK, and even necessary, to lament and mourn. Jesus taught us that those who mourn are blessed, because they will be comforted (Matthew chapter 5, verse 4). In various other places the Bible tells us that mourning will be turned to joy (Isaiah chapter 6, verses 1-3; Jeremiah chapter 31, verse 13), or that it has already happened (Psalm 30, verse 11). There is sometimes a time when we should be sad and in those times we need to grieve properly. However, God doesn't want us to remain in that place for ever. He is the one who can lift us up again. Memories last, lost things and people may not return to us in this lifetime, but joy returns if we allow God to bring it back to us (Psalm 30, verse 5).
I hope that you all have a great New Year season and that the whole of 2021 is full of blessing for you, through the happy times and the sad ones. I pray that the vast majority of your year will be full of joy and that you will still know the closeness of Jesus in any days when it is more appropriate to lament. "I am with you always, to the end of the age," Jesus told us before he ascended to Heaven (Matthew chapter 28, verse 20). And truly he is.
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