The Last Page

Ever read such an engaging book that you hated to read that last page?  Or viewed a movie so captivating that you didn't want it to end, and KNEW that you would purchase it for your home?

Today is that last page, that final scene, for 2012.  Traditionally this is a time when, in every culture, people reflect on the past. The world will be full of people who vow to make changes after midnight. They will eat less, walk more, stop eating sweets, run, sleep, join a gym, view less TV, and the list is as long as our virtues and vices!

I am no different as I sit with my coffee and reflect this year. I thought of the message yesterday in
Church. Then I opened the book I read each morning, along with my Bible, and began to put this together in my mind.

God gives us these times, and pauses in the book of our lives. And this closing of 2012 is not the final pages of our stories, but a chapter. And our book is not only about us, like we so frequently consider in this independent minded world.  We are a part of a much larger story. We are IN God's story for His world. He tells us that He set in place each of our days, and has them numbered. The Bible is the book of His story, but we are all characters inside this Book. Somewhere between Jude and Revelation is the chapter God is still writing, and it includes us.

So when I think of this, it changes how I am reviewing the book of my life  and the Bible (the message shared yesterday in church by Bill Stukenberg.)  When I read the final chapters of the Bible, I know  how God is going to bring to close the final pages of this grand Book, and  it gives me a different perspective to 2012-2013.  This chapter of my life, and maybe yours, may have been filled with mixed blessings or challenges. I know that I have faced some very difficult situations- it is not
easy to leave a community and nation that has become your home!  I miss everyone. I have faced other situations that were hard. I have had some unexpected blessings.  What makes me HOPEFUL
and expectant is that my chapter IS inside God's Book; and because I am in a relationship with God, (which He provided for me), I know that He is using each difficult page of this chapter, and that He is taking those paragraphs of pain, and using them to write my next chapter.  They were not experiences that were randomly thrown into my life chapter making it so much gibberish. God is using each mark, each letter, every word and all the pauses and paragraphs of my life to continue the next chapters for me.

I cannot close these thoughts any better than sharing from the book- "My Utmost for His Highest" by Oswsld Chambers.....I will paraphrase the thoughts for December 31.  Chambers says that God allows the memories of this year to turn our past into a spiritual culture for the future. He wants to transform the things in our past- since we cannot go back to change anything- but God delights in changing everything into constructive thoughtfulness for our future. Chambers closes with the idea that we intentionally leave our past, leave the chapter of 2012, resting in the hands of a capable and relational God and that we step out into the irrestible future- chapter 2013- with Him.


My prayer for you today:)