A new year commences, and with it comes the gift of a fresh start and a renewal of vows paid to the Lord in days and months and years past. Like a new dawn to a long night, a new beginning immerges, and something within me leaps with a new breath. Yes, it’s time to renew the sacred pledges, the holy chasings. This past year’s offering is one that I might not have chosen but am grateful for nonetheless. It is the gift of fresh awareness of my dependency, and more specifically, my spiritual dependency.  

How dependent I am to keep this heart alive, to cause this heart to burn in deeper love. My weakness He has etched more deeply upon my soul this year—the rocky crags of my barren land. He’s caused my clinging to dig deeper into the Vine, desperate and dependent. I have seen how utterly and even bitterly weak I am—how I’ve nothing apart from Him. These are necessary knowings. For only in the clinging comes the fruit bearing and never by any other way.

And so carrying this year’s gift as deep etchings upon my soul, grateful and humbled, I lift my eyes to the rising glimmer upon the horizon of this new year. Love must win again this year. And Expectation, wide-eyed as a child, rushes ahead of me with candid liveliness, her eyes searching for the One in whom all hope is anchored. With questions of, “Will He come again and answer me?” and, “Will He meet this weakness with His beautiful strength?” marking her trail, she dares to press. With lucid and piercing eyes, she immerges from the fog of yesteryear, compelling all behind her to follow her fixed gaze.

It’s time to believe. It’s time to arise. It’s time to be stirred in the deep of me and let raw longings for the Holy One lift their voices with strength. For He, as Expectation’s wide-eyes remind me, fiercely attends to His desire to bring me forth victorious, blameless in love, and filled with the fruits of bright righteousness (Eph. 1:4; Phil. 1:11). Forgetting what is behind, that which I am not fit to measure, I press forward (Phil. 3: 13; 1 Cor. 4:3). With fresh remembrance of my raw weakness engraved vividly upon my soul, I arise. With sweet consolation found in the remembrance of His rich abundance and extravagance, I begin the race and the holy chase of 2012.