Turning the Page

Happy New Year, friends. It is a new year, a new decade. The standard talk at this time is ring out the old, bring in the new, the new start, the fresh page, the looking ahead, forgetting the things of last year. But, what if the newest start you have is the new calendar page? What if the freshest page you have is the new calendar page? What if even the new page is scribbled with the messy markings of last year’s pain, disappointment, and struggle? Perhaps we are still dealing with the same set of sins, pains, difficulties and failures of last year. Sounds like a bit of a downer, doesn’t it? It isn’t actually. It could be a cause for consternation, but it isn’t.

This is the good news: We have the same God of last year, the year before that and the year before that. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever. (Hebrews 13:8) That is a wonderful confidence to hide in our hearts as we possibly face the same set of difficulties and circumstances of 2009, and yet turn the page into 2010. Beloved, God is the God of yesterday’s page and the God of today’s page and the God of tomorrow’s page. All of our pages are written by Him.

Several years ago, I stood in the church where my husband had recently been installed as an associate pastor. He was performing his first baptism as a part of this church and it was with a mixture of pride and humility that I watched from the second row. Standing directly in front of me was a man from the congregation videotaping the entire baptism. Next to him was someone with a digital camera, also commemorating the event, which was a mere shadow of the party the angels in heaven were simultaneously enjoying. At the moment the new convert came out of the water the church erupted into applause and praise, the Lord quietly whispered something into my ear: “Ellen, you take pictures of things that are happening so you can one day look back and remember them.” (I’m a scrapbooker, so God was totally speaking my language.) “But, I have a scrapbook filled with pictures of things that will be. There is nothing that happens today, yesterday or even tomorrow for which I need a camera to record the event. This day is just a picture on the page in my scrapbook, flipped open to today.”

The word of God says in psalm 139:16 “all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.” Beloved, every one of your days, present, past and future, yesterday, today and tomorrow already are a page in God’s scrapbook. That speaks to us of God’s sovereignty, His plan for us, His care and love for us. We are familiar with the verses from Jeremiah 29:11 which say that “I know the plans I have for you, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” These words were written to a people in captivity and in exile. God told them as oppression and exile started, “in seventy years, I am going to free you. I’m going to turn 70 x 365 days worth of pages and on that page will be written the day of freedom and return to Jerusalem.” Every one of the days of captivity, exile, and oppression were already written in His book. Beloved, every day of your days of unemployment, sickness, relational problems, estrangement from loved ones, uncertainty in economic trouble, name it, that paragraph on the page, that picture on the page is already in God’s scrapbook. He knows, He cares; we are in His hands. He already knows the day of freedom, the day of breakthrough, the day of reunion, the day the new job comes, the day of release from financial bondage. His plans for us are for good, for a hope, for a future, plans to prosper us, not to harm us. He knows. Our Saviour knows! He is in loving control.

So what then? As a famous Christian apologist of this century wrote, “how shall we then live?” Knowing that our lives are not random happenings, that our lives are not strung together by happenstance and entropic circumstances, that, in fact, we live in the care of a sovereign, able, wise, and loving God who is daily turning the pages of our scrapbooks into the new pages of each day, beloved, we rejoice, and proclaim: praise God from whom all blessings flow.

Go ahead; turn the page into tomorrow, knowing that every day ordained for you has already been written in His book, by His sovereign hand.