“All who want to come after me must say no to themselves, take up their cross daily, and follow me.” Luke 9:23 (CEB)
“Lord, we’ll follow where You lead.” These are the first words I hear on New Year’s Day, a moment after midnight. They flow from my husband as he bows his head over me, holding me close.
The previous year’s challenges have been put out to pasture, no longer in the foreground of our thinking. My husband and I stand on the brink of a new year, highly unlikely to be a repeat of the one just past.
I mean, how crazy would it be to have two years in a row with five surgeries before May and another in December, with hitting our maximum out-of-pocket expenses on March 1, with having our pipes freeze next to the well house deep underground and not having safe drinking water in the house from mid-January to mid-July?
So, my husband and I face this new year bravely, fairly certain it can’t be a duplicate of the one before.
But we’ve been around this new-year block enough times to know that the turn of a calendar page or a new date to write on checks doesn’t guarantee the year will be uneventful. What better way to ring in the wonder of a fresh start with a should-be-traditional prayer: “Lord, we’ll follow where You lead.”
I’ve thought of my husband’s prayer many times since that moment right after midnight. It said so much in so few words: “Jesus, we don’t know where the path will lead, but we welcome another year to follow You.”
Faith Step: Whether you feel most comfortable singing in the shower, the car, or on your knees before Jesus in prayer, make it a point to worship Him today with the now almost two-hundred-year-old song: “Where He Leads Me I Will Follow.” Or begin your morning with a simple “You lead. I’ll follow.”
Excerpted from Mornings with Jesus 2016.
