Fast Away...

There is nothing special about a day because of the calendar legend.  I know that.  Still, here I fidget, feeling that breathless anticipatory hope that comes from a fresh start.  In six hours I will mentally put a period to the sentence that is 2014...and as arbitrary as that seems, it symbolizes the satisfying exhaustion of accomplishment, mixed with relief.
Some years are filled with harder things than others, and those are months of a forced march with all my belongings piled on my back.  Others are dragonfly-skimming-on-the-water days that blur by in a green and blue haze.  Most of them seesaw between.  No matter the tenor of the time, it is distinctly satisfying to call it "done" and move on.  

The new year feels like the great do-over, where all seems possible...again.  Not because I can try to be, do, become, accomplish, but because God's mercies -- which are new every morning -- feel magnified in their newness at the changing of the calendar.  In difficulty, God has been faithful to provide comfort and growth.  He has multiplied peace and joy.  Like Joshua, I want to pick up remembrances as this old year passes, and carry them over the banks into the new place.  

And I am eager to get moving.

The people came up out of the Jordan on the tenth day of the first month, and they encamped at Gilgal on the east border of Jericho. And those twelve stones, which they took out of the Jordan, Joshua set up at Gilgal.  And he said to the people of Israel, “When your children ask their fathers in times to come, ‘What do these stones mean?’ then you shall let your children know, ‘Israel passed over this Jordan on dry ground.’ For the Lord your God dried up the waters of the Jordan for you until you passed over, as the Lord your God did to the Red Sea, which he dried up for us until we passed over, so that all the peoples of the earth may know that the hand of the Lord is mighty, that you may fear the Lord your God forever.