How to Set out into A New Year ~ Holy Experience

The New Year wears hope like a fragrance. I inhale.

And watch for it to come, this new year breaking up over the horizon. Over white rim of farm fields, new time, fresh hope, will dawn. And I wonder: how to walk across a New Year?

Tracks can only be made once.

Then a whiff on the wind: that stench.

That decaying rank that I know too well: fear. Reeking fear. I am impotent of change. I am doomed to this death body. Can new ways ever be be my ways? What if I will always be… (fill in the blank with choice fear: self-centered, overweight, uneducated, unmotivated, debt-ridden, angry, anxious, apathetic, unfulfilled…) What if our family, this marriage, these children, fester permanently here? What if tomorrows are just more of our yesterdays?

And this mingling aroma of sweet hope and putrid fear jolts me to kick self harder: "You simply must try harder.” Try harder to order my life: more organizing, more scheduling, more managing. Try harder to better educate our children: read more, create more, experience more. Try harder to be a heart after His: pray more, sing more, memorize more.

Try harder to tramp good tracks.

But the muddied mess of imprints over the last year attest to it: trying harder only results in harder trials. Self-striving nurtures self-hatred. Toiling in the flesh produces foiling in the soul.

Looking back over that the landscape of the last year, it's obvious: one needs more than simply sheer effort, gritty determination, to forge new tracks. But what?

The premier day of the newborn year nearly crowns and I stand at window, watching branches of the spruce trees rise on wind. I cannot see the wind, where she comes from, where she goes. I watch a thin veil of snow, blowing in with her, going off with her. And wind whispers in its going, rumors from Home: one needs wind’s hope, His Spirit.

That's New Year's perfume.

This wind will bring flakes to fill in the muddled tracks. His Grace Spirit will cover, fill in our empty spots. Intercede. Don't His mercies fall new every morning? That fear stench ebbs: every day, we begin again. Thankfully, we're always beginners.

Each day dawns Day One.

How then to make tracks through just this Day One? How to set out across this New Year?

Set back to the Wind

Set back to the wind, and let His Spirit gently move you forward. Let His Spirit carry when feet are too weak to carry on.

I bring myself up short with every “I must try harder.” And gently remind to form new words, utter new prayers that transport to new places: “Spirit, fill more of me. Lift me, Spirit.”

Set out into New Year’s hope knowing, “It is the Spirit who gives life, the flesh profits nothing (Jn 6:36)…Not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit, says the Lord Almighty (Zech. 4:6).” Set back to His Wind, and let Him fill your sail, your life.

Set jaw

Set back to the wind and set jaw to persevere. For we add to our faith, perseverance. The day will be long, the way deep. We will grow weary. We'll be tempted to turn back to rutted paths. But refuse. Because really, what can go awry by pressing onward? The Spirit’s got your back. So set jaw—persevere, be patient, embrace long processes– and let the wind blow.

Set times

Setting fixed times to make certain tracks each day allows for the wind to move us, for inspiration to surprise us.

If we pursue new, desired paths simply when we can get around to it, too often the darkening sky of the urgent distracts and detours us. Progress is born out of rhythm, routine, regularity.

Set times is how the saints met God: Daniel prayed three times a day facing Jerusalem (Daniel 6:10), the psalmist purposed to praise seven times a day, the early disciples prayed at fixed hours, 9 am in the upper room, (Acts 2:15),on the roof for noon prayers (Acts 10:9), on the way to temple for 3 pm prayers (Acts 3:1).

If set times are the necessary catalysts for spiritual growth, so are set times critically compelling elements for life growth. With back set to the wind, and jaw set, set habitual times to pioneer new habits. Uncertain times will lead to certain failure.

Set sights

Embark daily with a keen focus on the intermediate goals that line the way.

Break the trek across the year into smaller, daily journeys, and fix your sights on the these midway markers: one pound shed this week, a chapters read aloud per day to the kids, fifteen minutes a day of prayer, one date night per week with a child. Set sights close… “By no means do I count myself an expert in all of this, but I’ve got my eye on the goal, where God is beckoning us onward—to Jesus. I’m off and running, and I am not turning back” (Phil 3:13 MSG).

Set eye on the intermediary goals along the way —and be off and running!

Set Out

Simply, finally, take the first step. Again and again. The wind, hope on its wings, sweeps each new day clean before us, sweeps over our tracks from yesterday, filling with grace. Quell fear. Keep setting out.

“Jesus said, 'No procrastination. No backward looks. You can’t put God’s kingdom off till tomorrow. Seize the day' (Luke 9:62 MSG). Seize the day! Set out, fixing “attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out!” (Ro. 1:12 MSG). Changed from the inside out.

Set back to the wind, set jaw, set times, set sights... And when the New Year blows in, scented with hope-change, that Spirit wind will catch, lift.

We're set to Soar.