Praise and Gratitude for a New Year, 2011

“You crown the year with your bounty, and your carts overflow with abundance.” (Psalm 65:11. NIV). “The days of our years are three-score years and ten: and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labor and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away.” (Psalm 90:10. KJV). “So teach us to number our days that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.” (Psalm 90:12. KJV).

A brand new year stretches before me:
Three hundred sixty-five days.
The peaks and valleys I cannot see
For the year’s nuances are yet a haze
Of unknown ways, of hopes and dreams.
But God holds the future in His hands
And through it all whatever now seems
Unsure I’ll see in time within His plans.

The Lord crowns with bounty each fleeting year,
And adds blessings in abundant store;
Even maturing age and sorrows I may bear
Bring on wisdom needed more and more
To gain insights to the way His mighty plan
Is working itself out on earth below
In the vast incomparable time span
That through Him I will be privileged to know.

Lord, on the threshold of this brand new year
May my faith increase. Help me conquer doubt and fear.

c Ethelene Dyer Jones, Saturday, January 1, 2011