Tag Archives: New year

Blessing Jars

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A few years ago I made a blessings jar. About once a week I would write down something I was thankful for. Sometimes they were quite big things, like unexpected financial blessings, other times it was just something along the lines of a phone call with a friend.

This year I’ve got a bigger jar, because I believe that God’s got big blessings in store. And I know for certain that he does. No matter what happens this year, it will be full of blessings. Because really, you don’t need fancy holidays or nice cars to be blessed. (After all, Jesus said blessed are the poor in spirit and blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness)

When you start looking for blessings you realise they are everywhere. A favourite meal, a walk through trees covered in frost, a chance to chill on the sofa with a good book and a glass of gin. The opportunity to bless someone else, or show them Jesus, a coincidence that couldn’t just be a coincidence. It turns out that the old song count your blessings, name them one by one, and it will surprise you what the Lord has done really is true.

It might sound easy for me to say, after all 2020 was a great year for me. It turns out that getting married, even in the middle of a pandemic, even if you have to massively change plans at five days notice, really is great. But even if that hadn’t happened, I could have said that 2020 was a good year. Because God was there.

God is there just as much in the hard times, if you are going into 2021, not expecting much from it, and in a position of negativity, I suggest that you do something to count your blessings, you may be surprised. After all, my first blessings jar was started just a couple of months after moving home with my parents, to a town I didn’t know, and after the most difficult year of my life to date. And that blessing jar was filled to the brim.

Maybe taking that step of faith puts us in a position where we are open to receiving blessings. Maybe actively looking for what God has done, and praising him for it, gives us more faith, to take more risks, where we see God move in even more amazing ways.

If you want to read more about what it means to be blessed check out this post

If you are going into the new year feeling a bit down, why not read this

What if Twenty Seventeen wasn’t Your Year?

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These last couple of days I have noticed a lot of my Facebook friends have been sharing all the good things that have happened for them over the last year. All the things they have achieved, all the hopes fulfilled and new adventures. The kind of posts that social media was made for. The kind of posts that make you ninety percent happy and ten percent jealous. (Or was it the other way round?)

Maybe you are of the generation that still sends and receives Christmas letters full of tales of A-grades and picture perfect children. How can their lives just keep on getting better and better every year, without even the smallest trouble?

What if your twenty seventeen was nothing like that? What if your twenty seventeen was was just average, or a whole lot worse? What if you’re leaving twenty seventeen just as confused as you entered it?

Maybe you are scared to hope that this year will even be just okay.

What I am not going to say right now is that this is a new year, and it will be better. Because it might not be.

I’m not going to tell you that if you have the right attitude, eat the right food and wake up two hours earlier you will achieve everything you wanted to. Because even if this was true, I know it won’t last beyond the first page of a new calendar.

What I am going to tell you is that I am slowly starting to realise that this life is less and less about what we do, what we believe and more and more about be still and Knowing God.

Not just knowing about God, but actually truly knowing him. Life is about running into his arms and bowing at his feet and just being in his presence. And everything else flows from that.

Being a Christian doesn’t safeguard us from trials, it actually guarantees them. But when you Know God, you can find a way through even the hardest times, without becoming hard. You can face hopeless situations with out losing hope. You can be crushed by the pressures of this world but never break. You can be persecuted and abused, but you never forsaken. You can be struck down but never destroyed.

I am sure to a lot of outsiders it looks like I am entering into 2018 in much the same way as I entered 2017. That maybe it is taking me too long to move on from a painful marriage and out of my parents home. I know that some people will be confused by the decisions that I have made, but I can honestly say, for the first time in my adult life, that I know I am right where God wants me to be. My life may not be what I imagined it would be, but that doesn’t matter.

This kind of knowledge doesn’t come from anything other than learning to slow down and dwell in God’s presence.