Welcome 2022
The year is a new one, but I feel basically the same. I have the same body, same personality, same soul. As of today, I have the same habits and patterns, the same virtues and vices. The same things entice me, trip me up, confound me. The same things encourage me, comfort me, fuel me.
Most of the same relationships are prominent in my life, but two are still glaringly missing—my mom and my dad. The world around me is constantly changing, rocked by the pandemic, natural disasters, and so many varieties of unrest and dissension. I want to soar into the new year with expectation and high hopes. But, like many others I’m sure, I am limping a bit into 2022—a little battered and somewhat depleted. I continue to grope my way through the convoluted dimly lit halls of grief, working through my own loss, while greatly disturbed by the pain and unrest around me.
But just under the cloudy gray surface is an undercurrent of anticipation, a whisper of hope. It’s not the new numbers at the top of the calendar that inspire this energy—but the One who created time in the first place.
Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope: Because of the LORD’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. Lamentations 3:21-23
It’s interesting that this golden nugget of hope and encouragement, so full of the fire I need to strike off confidently into 2022, is found right in the middle of a book of laments, sandwiched between groaning and regret, pleading and anguish, anger and hopelessness. The writer chronicles the sin of his people and the subsequent God-ordained demise of the land. He details their sorrow and pain, the unspeakable horrors suffered, and paints a vivid picture of despair and desolation—in the end assuming a personal posture of repentance on behalf of his people.
But in the middle of this excruciating Old Testament lament rises the shining beacon of the Gospel: New mercies this morning! Hope today! Everything I need to not simply soldier on, but to soar, shedding my cloak of heaviness as I walk expectantly and joyfully into 2022.
I will say to myself, “The LORD is my portion; therefore I will wait for him.” 3:24
Why will I wait for him?
The LORD is good to those whose hope is in him, to the one who seeks him; it is good to wait quietly for the salvation of the LORD. 3:25-26
Welcome 2022. Welcome.
May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, O LORD, my Rock and my Redeemer. Psalm 19:14