Valuable lessons from 2019

One decade comes to an end in a couple of hours, and another one begins. Nothing spectacular really, it’s just the way that we organize time. But friends and family are asking what was special about the past year; and what are my hopes and expectations for the next year. The first thing that comes to my mind is a valuable truth that I was reminded of, more than once, in the past year. Be grateful. Nothing very profound, and yet such an important lesson that I know I need to be regularly reminded of.

I was determined to finish the year with thanksgiving, and as I walked with my dog in the fresh snow that we have here right now I spoke out several things that I am grateful to the Lord for. We have a large driveway, and one of the items that I am grateful to have this time of the year is a snowblower. I verbalized my gratitude to the Lord, and as soon as I let my dog back into the house I pulled out the snowblower in order to make use of it. I plugged it in, gave it a burst of gas, turned the choke up, and pressed the ignition. It turned over a few times, but when I took my finger off of the ignition it died. I tried again, and the snowblower turned over a few times more, but still it was not keeping going. My husband encouraged me to try again, but this time there was a horrible grating noise, and I quickly stopped. I waited a few minutes and then tried again. Still that horrible grating noise. My husband gravely informed me that he thought the motor had seized up. Or to put it another way, the snowblower was broken.

I did pray for the snowblower. I spoke life into it. Yet it remained dead. I asked the Lord to heal it. There was no resurrection of the snowblower tonight. The snow was not too difficult to clear with a shovel, but like I said, we have a large driveway. And how many times will we have to clear it in the next few weeks? We will try and get the blower repaired, but it is quite old and may be beyond repair. I do not even know how we can get it to a repair shop.

With all the questions surrounding what we should do next, my husband and I took time out to praise and worship the Lord. We chose to do that because we know it to be the right thing to do. It was not an attempt to twist God’s arm to give us a miracle. It was a desire to get our hearts in the right place, and to honour the Lord, because he is worthy of all honour and praise and glory.

My gratitude list is really long! I may not have a working snowblower anymore, but I am thankful for snow shovels, and for not too much snow, and for the strength to do the clearing by hand.

Then when we tried to do the vacuuming, guess what – the vacuum is now broken too! I have learned a valuable lesson in 2019 though, and I am going to express my gratitude to the Lord even if not everything is going the way that I would like it to. I had a wonderful Christmas, lots of good food, fun presents, and fantastic times hanging out with my family. I am healthy, my family are mostly healthy, my dog is healthy. And I am loved by God. Wow. Yes. I am loved by God. I do indeed have a lot to be grateful for.