HAPPY NEW YEAR

HAPPY NEW YEAR! I appreciate many things as we begin this year, including your willingness to keep reading WEEKLY MESSAGE. May 2012 be filled with wonderful blessings for you and your loved ones, and may nothing evil happen in our world. Rather like the man who prayed, "Dear God please grant that this new year I will have a fat bank account and a skinny body, not the other way around like last year."

I like Ben Stein. His combination of humor, communication skills, common sense and, uncommon intelligence make him both interesting and worth paying attention to. In his November, 2011, Newsmax article, "Cherish Your Moments," Ben states his main point that, "Of all life's mysteries, the most cruel and unyielding is that the moment, which seems to be permanent and fixed today, passes and is gone forever." He continues, "The only thing I can do about it is to cherish the time I have left." Then he lists those most important to him among family and friends and concludes, "… and to appreciate them while I still have them."

Time does go by so quickly. 1 Peter 1:24-25 says, "The grass withers, the flower falls, but the Word of the Lord remains forever." Psalm 90:12 prays, "Teach us to number our days that we may gain a heart of wisdom." Moses wrote Psalm 90. We don't know how old he was then, but Deuteronomy 34:7 tells us, "Moses lived to be 120, his eyes undimmed and his vigor unabated." I'm sure that won't happen to us, but time will go by quickly, and we will not pass this way again.

Some people are speculating that 2012 will be a cataclysmic year, that something will happen to change the course of human history. Perhaps that will be so, perhaps not. But if you trust in God for your life, then "No evil shall fall upon you, nor any plague come near your home." (Psalm 91:10) That doesn't mean we will avoid all evil, but that we will not be crushed by it.

So we need to be ready for whatever comes. Jesus assured us in John 6:47, "Whoever believes [in Me] has eternal life." Having faith in Christ is being ready. We don't know the future, only that the Day of the Lord will come when we least expect it. If Christ comes and this world ends, then 2012 will usher in the best life of all for believers, an eternity of peace in the loving presence of God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

In the meanwhile, cherish and appreciate your fellow travelers on the road of life.