The New Year is upon us. That usually means setting resolutions that will probably be broken by the middle of March. So today instead of looking ahead, how about we pause and reflect on the past year. What were your blessings in 2014?
Psalm 20:4 reads, May he give you the desire of your heart and make all your plans succeed. So did all your desires come true? Funny, mine didn’t either. However, I am sure there are blessings you received, and those you probably hadn’t even thought of.
Before you do your goals for next year, write a list of blessings first. It doesn’t have to be too long – five to ten will do. In fact, I’ll start. Here are five terrific things I see God gave me this past year.
A healthy family. Except for a couple of colds and a female issue I went through, we have not had any major health issues.
- My future son-in-law got a job with the government. After graduating, he’d been working two to three jobs to make ends meet. Now he has one job that pays all the bills, and then some.
- I had two more books come out. And these I self-published. That in and of itself is an accomplishment since I’m somewhat technology-challenged.
- Where I work as a paralegal, things have been going strong. This tells me the economy is starting to pick up. It means I’m also employed at a job I still enjoy.
- God has made sure I’ve had enough to eat. That might not be a good thing since I also didn’t lose all the weight I wanted this year. Guess I’ll shove that goal off to next year again. But there are a lot of people out there who go hungry every day. I can say, I am not one of them.
How about you? What blessings can you look back on and see?
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“We will open the book. Its pages are blank. We are going to put words on them ourselves. The book is called Opportunity and its first chapter is New Year’s Day.” – Edith Lovejoy Pierce
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It’s always wise to look back and reflect before moving forward. Too often we only see the things that didn’t occur. We didn’t lose the weight we wanted to. We didn’t get out of debt. Too many of us view our world through the wrong end of a pair of binoculars. However, if you turn your focus around, you will get the bigger picture and discover that more blessings occurred than you ever imagined.
So share with us your blessings this past year. Let us praise God with you. It never hurts to get that feeling of accomplishment before you start a new list.
If you or someone you know are in need of prayer this week, please let us know. We’d be more than happy to pray for you.
And if this post moved you in some way, please feel free to share it.
