Grace, mercy, and the start of a new year

Answer me, O LORD, for your steadfast love is good;

according to your abundant mercy, turn to me.

Psalm 69:16

On the cusp of a new year with just two days left in 2024 I’m reflective. Of course, in a sense, a new year is just the rollover of a number… a new calendar hanging on the wall. But there is a time of reflection that I find myself doing… and 2024 has a whole lot of reflection to ponder. Taking my cues from this scripture, I will let God’s Word guide how I frame a few reflective thoughts.

First… God’s steadfast love (grace) is always good. I’ve seen His grace flow to me and flood my life in so many ways. Here are two of them:

• Grace helps me minister His grace. There have been some really rough  counseling  ministry situations God has placed me as a pastor to shepherd and care for. And I have tried to keep God’s grace central to those situations. He has been doing redeeming work and changing hearts, but it has been hard. I’d be drained if not for the exhilarating experience of His inexplicable grace.
• Grace received by me in a restart. 2023 was all about grief. 2024 saw me moving forward with my story. No more widowed, but carrying all that past into a new marriage. Going forward, with grace, by grace, in grace, with all those decades behind me so that the new grace of a new marriage might be a big part of God’s steadfast love shown to me. It has been truly amazing and a personal revitalization for me. It is a continuous place of God working graciously in me.

Secondly… God’s abundant mercy has forgiven me and remade me this year. I know I did not deserve the life I have. He has shown me incredible mercy so that I too can be merciful.

• I need mercy to help me be better. The challenge of everything becoming new means that some of my old needs to flex with it. Keeping the old and embracing the new is a tight dance. A new spouse, new family members, a new home, a new kind of lifestyle have all been used to purge out crusty old attitudes and patterns. Mercy falls rich in the newness.
• I need mercy to share with others. All the new things, which are really great, are also touched with a level of brokenness. That is to be expected in a fallen world. The gospel has to fill me and flow into the new. Mercy has to lead me. Thank God His mercy is ABUNDANT going into 2025!