May God Crown the New Year with Bounty

“Praise is due You, O God in Zion, and to You shall vows be performed, O You who hear prayer to You shall all flesh come…You crown the year with bounty.” -Psalm 65:1-2, 11a (ESV). [Read Psalm 65]

This is the first day of a brand New Year! Welcome, 2017! The end of the year just passing and the beginning of a new year is a somber time for me: a time to reflect upon blessings, to remember, sometimes to consider regrets and to seek forgiveness, but certainly a time to look forward with anticipation to the fresh new year beginning. I highly recommend David’s reflections in Psalm 65 as a basis for our own thoughts of remembrance and reflection as we look both backward and forward and thank God for the time he continues to give us to “live and move and have our being” in this present world. May we awake each day of 2017 with this acclamation on our lips: “This is the day which the Lord has made; we will rejoice and be glad in it!” (Psalm 118:24)

Why am I living in this year of our Lord, 2017? Do you consider that God had a purpose for each of us, even before we were conceived in our mother’s womb? So we are told in Psalm 22:10: “On you was I cast from my birth, and from my mother’s womb you have been my God.”

The beginning of a New Year is a time of reflection—of looking back to count blessings, both spiritual and temporal. And among them are our beginnings, the family into which we were born. I hope each of you reading this, as I, had a loving Christian home, one where parents trained you up in the way you should go, so that when you were older you would not depart from their Christian instruction (as promised in Proverbs 22:6). I owe a great debt to my parents. And they, too, exampled for me, when I became a parent, that I had a godly responsibility to the children entrusted to me. At the closing out of the old year and the beginning of the new, I am flooded with remembrances and thanksgivings of who I am because of the foundations of faith and stability in which I was reared.

As the New Year dawns, it is a time of anticipation. David’s Psalm 65 attests strongly to God’s providence and salvation. In the Psalm the author affirms that the people will make their prayers to God and pay their vows. He anticipates that God will visit the earth, water it, make it produce. He pictures how the people will have what they need: “You crown the year with Your bounty; your wagon tracks overflow with abundance” (Psalm 65:11). What then, is my purpose, your purpose, as the new year 2017 dawns? Could our purpose be to praise and honor God, to live close to Him, to recognize His favor, to pray for and love our families and be reconciled to them? To pray earnestly for our country and its leaders, to live as responsible, caring, helping citizens, to love those with a godly love within the parameter of our influence? . Psalm 65:4 gives us an answer: “Blessed is the one You choose and bring near to dwell in Your courts!” Consider that God has chosen each believer for this time and place in history in the vast span of time and eternity. What a sobering and awesome thought!. A strong example from history happened during the reign of King Ahaseurus of Persia, who ruled from about 486-464 BC. Her Uncle Mordecai said to Esther when she was to approach King Ahaseurus on behalf of the Jews: “And who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this?” (Esther 4:14b, ESV).

What an awesome message for 2017 is contained in David’s words in Psalm 65:5-8: “By awesome deeds You answer us with righteousness, O God of our salvation, for the hope of all the ends of the earth and of the farthest seas; the One who by His strength established the mountains, being girded with might: who stills the roaring of the seas, the roaring of their waves, the tumult of the peoples, so that those who dwell at the ends of the earth are in awe at Your signs. You make the going out of the morning and the evening to shout for joy.”

Prayer: O Lord, our Lord, in this year of our Lord, 2017, we are thankful to be alive! Help us reflect on Your bountiful provisions in the past and anticipate with joy Your leadership in this New Year and in the future.

-Ethelene Dyer Jones 01.01.2017