On January 1, 2009, if someone had told me Nate wouldn’t be with us on January 1, 2010 because cancer would kill him before then, I wouldn’t have believed it.
In February of 2009, if someone had told me Linnea and Adam would be delivering a new baby in February of 2010, I wouldn’t have believed it.
In April of 2009, if someone had told me Katy and Hans would be delivering twins in April of 2010, I wouldn’t have believed it.
What might we not know now, on the last day of 2009, that will take place by the last day of 2010? What will happen by then that today we “wouldn’t believe”?
This morning I spent time thinking about God’s omniscience. He knows it all, what will happen tonight, tomorrow and everything between now and next New Year’s Eve. God is superior to us in assessing every situation and in knowing what to do… ahead of time. He knows the specific negatives coming to each of us in 2010, whether by his wise design, by our own sin, or by Satan’s wicked plans. He also knows the positives coming, such as helpful employment, weddings, answers to prayer, pay raises, improved relationships, healings, new babies. Because God is all-knowing, I’ve often asked him to prepare me for whatever is ahead. I believe he did a great job answering that prayer ahead of Nate’s cancer diagnosis. Learning about it was a forceful blow, but when we looked back, we saw how he’d prepared us.
I’m still praying the same prayer, that God will prepare me (and others) for whatever is coming. He lets us in on some things well ahead of time, those things we can put on a calendar like graduations, house closings, birthdays, job interviews. But by Christmas of 2010, every calendar square will have been full of something. Only God knows those somethings as we stand at the beginning of the next 365 days.
I’ve chosen a verse to hang as a banner over the year 2010. It’s God’s invitation to prayer found in the Old Testament in Jeremiah 33:3. “Call to Me and I will answer you, and I will tell you great and mighty things, which you do not know.” (Jeremiah 33:3)
That sounds pretty good to me and is about as close to being prepared for the future as I can be. There isn’t anyone more able to get me ready than God himself, and with this verse coaxing me to talk to him, even to ask questions, and with his promise to answer me, I’ll be calling to him a great deal.
The year stretches in front of us all, and I’m excited to find out what those “great and mighty things” are, the ones God has assured me he will tell me. By the last day of 2010, I have confidence I’ll be able to look back and say, “I was prepared, and it was God who did it.”
“I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, says the Lord, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty.” (Revelation 1:8)