The New Year

The New Year celebration came and went here without much fuss on my part. New Year’s Eve was spent at the church with about a dozen good friends from the Shurance and Caballero families along with a few folks from the church and kids from the community. It rained, which made me feel a little sad and homesick, but which also made watching some of the younger folks play soccer on a wet slippery field really entertaining. We waited until after midnight to have the best and latest New Year’s meal of sausage, roast chicken, mandioca, potato salad, rice salad, tomato and cucumber salad, and soda. As on Christmas, the city lit up at midnight with fireworks as so many thousands of amateur pyros lit off so many tons of explosive gun powder.

People say that every new year is a good chance to reflect on the year past and to also wonder at the year ahead. Not wanting to forsake any tradition, I’ve been doing some reflecting of my own. Last year at this time, I was at the Urbana Missions Conference in St. Louis wondering where in tarnation I’d be today. Needless to say, after much prayer and preparation, I’ve arrived here in Paraguay, ready to serve and learn. God was incredibly faithful in getting me ready to go and securing in my heart the desire to come here, and I’m so thankful for the certainty He’s placed in my heart that here is where I needs be for now.

And as for next year? Just like one year ago, once again only Heaven knows where I’ll be or what I’ll be doing when the calendar strikes 2009. With my family in turmoil at home and friends in places all over the States (neigh, even all over the world), plenty of things I’d like to do and experiences I’d like to have (not the least of which is finally settle down a little bit and maybe get a job, or wife), and an open heart and mind for plenty of tasks, I really could end up anywhere doing any thing.

I once thought that after high school life choices would be easier and easier to make, with certain pathways becoming more and more clear every day ( ie. get a Georgetown political science degree and girlfriend, go to law school and make her my fiancé, find a job and take her as a wife.) Needless to say, the way I imagined things has turned out much differently, and it seems to me today as if I’m right at the beginning again with so many possibilities and so many choices.

I don’t complain, though. To have so many options is a unique and beautiful gift, and something I don’t ever want to take for granted. Still, however, it’s a tough gift at times, and one that builds up my faith in the work God’s going to do in my life tomorrow as I keep on trying to do the work He’s got for me today. Thankfully, I know some things for sure that I have to do every day, since I know “what [is] good; and what doth the LORD require of me, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God.¨ When it’s all said and done, perhaps the best thing I can do is to not let too much of me or own thinking get in the way of this necessary way of life. After all, “A man's heart deviseth his way: but the LORD directeth his steps..”