2024

For we are His workmanship [His own master work, a work of art], created in Christ Jesus [reborn from above—spiritually transformed, renewed, ready to be used] for good works, which God prepared [for us] beforehand [taking paths which He set], so that we would walk in them [living the good life which He prearranged and made ready for us]. Ephesians 2:10 Amplified Bible

Click the sound track of contemplating a new year.🙂❤️🤔😍

December 31, 2023 Sunday

I’ve woke again in the middle of the night (12:30 a.m.) but with already 6 hours of sleep behind me I lay awake and now I sit with coffee at 3:11 a.m. My sleep is a wavy, wily thing lately and I like it just fine. I have no one to scold me or worry about this. I am keeping no one awake with my jaunt through insomnia-land. My coffee pot sputtering and spitting the last bit of bean water out into my cup was heard by my cat and she’s a careless fool of contentment.

It’s peaceful here, still lit with Christmas on the verge of a new year. I wish for sweet things to move me on along the way, one new digit closer to something is 2024. I wish for the grander things in life to dot the road for stopping, like attending sunsets, sauteing onions and herbs in a pan, the glint of light and mist over water, staring into a patch of grass to find a romantic, tiny city carrying on beneath my feet. I want the profound things, like moon gazing and star naming and connecting all those celestial lights to finally figure out the beauty of God. I’ll trip over words and fall among the phrases trying to tell it right.

In the spring I want to plant in my new patch delicacies for my table, things with color and texture for my eyes and my stomach. I want to walk on small town streets pretending I’m not searching for something, while finding hot summer epiphanies, collecting them for private display like a child making a mason jar lantern catching fireflies from the yard. I want to string them up, all that I find, put my discoveries on the page, hold them for viewing like those dried lemon slices I strung on twine last week or the strand of bulbs I see draping above patios and porches these days. They’re not hard to catch, epiphanies, that is. But I must go where they fly, out into solace, into the lingering, into the unplanned nothingness, that’s where they twinkle in the air for plucking. They float through gardens, past the girl on a John Deere, over forest trails, they hang above hammocks and books. They poke lonely drivers going places new, they land on midnight foreheads gently tapping for entrance, filling pools of pondering and planting fields of figuring. Figuring them out takes thinking spots and tender times. I want all this. The cost is higher than coins and bills, but I can afford it if I don’t squander the time scrolling. The cost is surrender to HIS will.

I must weigh this, charge this to my account, this knowing, this desire to live in the significance.  I realize that I am curator of a life, bringing the harvests to the One who has given me this time in the lands of the living. I am quite wealthy if I can let my self-will go along seamlessly into His.  I am steward of an ancient dream; charged to be the discoverer within the plan of Me in Him and Him in Me.

I have stewardship, if I’m willing, of many things, like the the delight over rays of morning light beaming on the golden wood floors of home. I guess their regular visit is lonely as I slip by their warm welcome and their invitation to indulge, to become a melting stick of butter before them, if for only a moment to lie in the way of sunbeams. I rarely notice them these days in my quest to move along to the next thing, but I am glimpsing their light now. Sunbeams are good for me. Somehow, I know this to be true. Sunbeams have a language too, a molten motherly flow of light-words, steaming into my room like hot pudding poured from the bowl, smelling of vanilla and milk.

I just want to pour into a new digit like that, easy because my aversion to goal setting is equal to my disdain for failing them. I feel some relief as my wishful thinking has puddled with hopeful possibilities, noodled with sweet notions. If I just imagine bouquets of garden-cut herbs on my counter, or bright words on my page, if I remember plump, purple tomatoes from the catalog on my plate, or an Arkansas valley from a cliff’s side view with friends then my fantasy can lean me forward towards big, glorious changes in a new year in spite of myself. He purposed this new year with good works to do, like to steward all of the wonder.

I make no promises to myself, no declarations for my rehabilitation into this destiny, but through this lens I can see the death grip of time-stealing-lower-things becoming brittle and weak as death should be. If I slip free I’ll slip into something more comfortable, like garden gloves, walking shoes, leisurely contemplation, and curiosity, to slide with the new year into surrender to ancient things, old ways and things like a life well lived, like the rapture of a rain shower, and making new things like fond memories to tuck ‘round my mind like a cushion. I want new memories with God, like those favorite days when creature and creator see one another new, deep and true in moments charged from hearing the word of God and doing something about it. The first thing I think I’ll do is lie in morning sunbeams.

Happy 2024