I’ve got to admit…it’s less than six hours away as I write this…it’s almost 2012…and I’m excited! 

Typically New Years Eve comes and goes and I don’t feel compelled to blow horns, throw confetti, or find someone to kiss at the stroke of midnight.  As I think back over the years, the millennial shift to 2000, bringing with it all the impending doom of Y2K, was the last New Years Eve I remember having any particular emotional response to…mostly a sigh of relief that my electronic equipment didn’t seize up for a lack of digits.  This year, however, I feel a sense of anticipation and excitement bordering on giddiness.  While people have been throwing out all kinds of predictions about 2012, from world-wide disaster to huge evolutionary leap, I simply believe that 2012 contains within it the seeds of greatness.  As I’ve prayed about the coming year the words of Isaiah 43 verses 18 and 19 continue to come to mind:  “Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past.  See, I am doing a new thing!  Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?  I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland.”  I believe God is preparing to do a ”new thing” in 2012 and He is calling his people to prepare for it so we are able to “perceive” it.  Later in Isaiah God’s word speaks of ”proclaiming the year of the Lord’s favor.”  I believe that proclaiming this as the year of the Lord’s favor, initially being quoted as a part of Jesus’ mission, is to become a part of our mission this year.  I believe God wants us to let go of our attachment to the past and get ready because He is doing a new thing! 

2012…Let’s proclaim this as the year of the Lord’s favor!

It is my prayer that you each have a blessed New Year celebration and that the coming 365 days are filled with peace, challenges that bring new opportunities, and great blessings.

Pastor Steve