2023

We close out 2022 – another calendar year concluded – WOW!

It is an annual ritual to put up new calendars after transferring important personal notes to each day of the new calendar.  The months of the coming year remain the same and the number of days in each the same except February every fourth year. The coming year is in a host of ways a repeat of the previous year with only “minor” changes.  Minor for many things are unchanged and unchangeable – rotation and revolution and the movement of direct rays from Cancer to Capricorn and back.  The turning of the globe eastward, the jetstream’s direction, gravity, water freezing at 32 F, pollination and fertilization, full moons, and the North Star.  These and others – unchanged and unchangeable.

Yet, within the “set” days of 2023 loom any number of “huge” events for individuals, groups or even the planet.  There will be deaths, failures, murders, frustrations, rejections, sickness, fears, quakes, storms and attacks.  So, 2023 looms – ready or not!  Actually, only ready if saved by faith in Jesus to forgive you and adopt you.

These notes from Imprimis, a publication of Hillsdale College, Vol. 51, Num. 12.

“Each morning we awake after disappearing in sleep for a split second of eternity…we have successfully spun around the earth’s axis … since yesterday.”  Living at Omaha’s latitude, we have traveled about 20,000 miles over the past 24 hours.  “Without batting an eye or breaking a sweat, we have rocketed over a million and a half miles in our orbit around the sun since this time a day ago and we are going to start over and perform these mysteries and miracles again in a mere 24 hours.”

“So it is every New Years’ Day, but on a scale at least 365 times more inspiring.  Now we reflect that just in our daily rotations, we have spun over 7,000,000 miles since last year, and in our orbiting, we have sailed an unthinkable 568 million miles through space. Once again, astonishing and without mishap, leaving aside the odd war, depression or plague – we have revolved around the sun and come back to where we started, to begin anew.  Winter has turned to spring, summer to fall, and back to winter.”

“Resolutions was one of the virtues Franklin listed among a dozen others he aspired to acquire in his effort to achieve moral perfection… Franklin was not wrong to aspire, however imperfectly, to be a man whose resolves are what they ought to be and who keeps his resolves. Such a man is worthy of complete trust.”

“Lincoln was hesitant to trust himself in any matter of much importance until he knew he was such a man.  And he became one, so that, in the greatest crisis of his country, he could with utter rectitude invite a whole people to join him and “highly resolve…that this nation, under God, shall have. a new birth of freedom- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

May it be our 2023 resolve to know God all the better in order to love and adore Him all the more, to show and tell of Him fearlessly and clearly and to be found ready and excited for His taking us to His side in the Rapture.  Even so, come quickly, Lord Jesus!

May 2023 find us at SSB joyful in the face of pressures, steadfast in the presence of changes, and strong in defense of beliefs.  May we be a bright light bringing glory to God in all that we do.

May we, as faithful servants, know His blessings, protection and voice often, if not daily, in 2023.