With entrance into a New Year, it is time to update the desk calendar. It carries important dates and reminders such as birthdays, standing appointments, meetings, and things scheduled. Barb is very organized in this sort of thing, and she always buys me a desk calendar when she gets hers. Usually this purchase is made weeks or even months in advance of the New Year so we will have plenty of time to transfer the information from one calendar to the other. This past year, I did not have a mind to transfer the information until late in December. I started looking for my little desk calendar she had gotten me. I repeatedly looked all through the desk papers, in files, in brief cases, in short, in every possible place I could think of. I thought I remembered it being a thin black book. This went on off and on over a period of days, even weeks. My thoughts had turned to, “Well, I’ll just go get another one and use this one next year when I find it. That won’t work for next year! I really need to find this one. I know it is here somewhere.” So one day, having searched for it one more time, I leaned back and took a moment to sort of relax from the office work I had been doing, and “Vwalla’!” What did I see propped up facing me on a little 4” x 4” x 8” tall phone stand I had built for my desk – my new desk calendar! It had been there the whole time staring me in the face! I had put it there so it would be very easy to find when I wanted to start transferring information.
Most of us have heard the expression, “You can’t see the forest for the trees.” Well this was a case in point. Many times with the things of God, we can’t see what has been staring us in the face the whole time. Because we tend to read into the Word things that we have been taught, we fail to get the fresh “manna” that is available to us. For this coming year, we need to be asking God and believing to show us and bring us into those truths of the Word and the life experiences that have been there all the time, but we have not seen them yet. There is always more of God to know and possess. If we think we have “attained”, we are blind indeed. Our God is a big God, and we want to receive all he has for us. It is written right there in the Word, but it takes the Spirit of God to “see” it. Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever with all the life, power, and plans that he has for us. It is staring us right in the face. By looking to and calling upon him, we can engage 2024 with a fresh experience of life.