I’ve thought a lot about what I could blog about to kick off the new year. I’ve thought of stuff ranging from discussing all the things I hope to do better this year, to coming up with some kind of consistent theme that would actually weave through many future efforts. Nothing has struck me as blog-worthy.
Then, I uploaded my photos from the last couple of weeks. When it comes down to it, the thing that makes me happiest right now are the simple things and the beautiful moments that are sprinkled throughout each day. Maybe the best thing I could do this year would be to relish these moments that are there for the picking, rather than missing them in the midst of life’s sorrows, worries and distractions.
This photo captures one such moment… it is Tyler & Ian and me playing on the cold beach during our stay in Florida last week. While the week was wrought with everything from the coldest temperatures in 115 years to miscarriage, it was also full of sweet little moments like this one. Thank goodness some are captured in photos, or I might have missed them altogether.
It’s one thing to enjoy such times retrospectively, but I suspect life would be even better if I were more fully aware of the beautiful stuff as it’s happening. Maybe that’s the challenge I’ll accept this year… or at least this week.
Matthew 6:25-34 (New International Version, ©2010)
25 “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? 26 Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? 27 Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life[a]?
28 “And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. 29 Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. 30 If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? 31 So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ 32 For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. 33 But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. 34 Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.
