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How to have a truly happy new year.

For the first time in years, I don’t remember my New Year’s resolution from January. Usually, I write it down in my journal or on a note I stick to my mirror. There’s been many of those dog-eared sticky notes from years past. The year of contentment. Speaking life. We passed pancakes across the breakfast table on January 1st this year. “What do you want from 2018?” I can’t remember my answer. I know what I didn’t want though. I didn’t want to walk into her office and share the parts of my life I’m inclined to hide. I didn’t want to Facetime her the day after she delivered her baby that never breathed. I didn’t want to spend four months wondering how I’d walk into her house on Christmas day and see her empty chair. I didn’t want to go on another first date that led nowhere. We sit across from each other in a little coffee shop in Colorado, picking at a charcuterie board. “When I think about all of the things I have left to go through,” her voice cracks....

When the World Goes Mad

It is right around the time when the headlines are flashing ISIS and Ebola. Everyone is waiting and wondering and watching. The world is going mad. And I’m reading Daniel: prophecies about Alexander the Great and the antichrist.

Daniel asks what we are all wondering. Why why why? “O my lord, what shall be the outcome of these things?” (Daniel 12:8) When I read the answer, I want to sit back on my bed in the early morning light and laugh and cry. “Many shall purify themselves and make themselves white and be refined, but the wicked shall act wickedly” (Daniel 12:10).

The world is in labour, its birth pains growing. We’re human and the timeline for the future is foggy. We’ve flipped ahead in the Book and read the end; God wins. His purpose is what it has always been: to purify us for His glory.

The world is going mad and we’re wondering if the scales for the cost of following Christ in North America will tip. Carrying our cross will not be silent treatment at family gatherings for sharing the gospel, but it will be a choice for inevitable death and pain. Daniel gets his answer and I get mine. Christ will refine us no matter what.

Pain is purposeful. Persecution is purposeful. His plans are perfect.

The end brings Hope. Forever.





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