Skip to main content

Telling Time

"In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord" ~ Isaiah 6:1

Recently, I was reading Isaiah 6, and I was struck by the contrast in the opening verse. Isaiah kicks off this passage about an amazing vision of God he experienced that led to his calling as a prophet by saying it happened "In the year that King Uzziah died". Now, in his time period, describing a well-known event that also happened that year was a great way for listeners to understand when he had this vision. The year designations we have now weren't around back in the time of the prophets because they're based on when Jesus came, which was hundreds of years after the time of Isaiah. However, even in the 21st century, we can fall into this same pattern of telling time. A few examples of this from my own life:
  • 2004: In the year both my grandmothers died, I got my kitten Angel and went to a wonderful church camp.
  • 2012: In the year I was in a scary car accident, I went to Scotland and started a job I love.
  • 2016: In the year my friend Katherine died, I successfully voted for the president and appeared on a local news show to talk about my trip to Vancouver the year before.
So why do we keep doing this? I think the answer, at least in my life, is that sometimes the hard things make more of an impression on me than the good. My grief over Grandma Rohmeyer's death led to a depression that almost destroyed me. While I miraculously walked away from that car accident, it left me with fears I have to explain, a bum knee that flares up randomly, and near-constant headaches, with at least a few each year that alternate between being blinding and dizzying. When Katherine died, my confidence as a writer did as well. Additionally, since she died of cancer, the months before were filled with anxiety warring with hope. I was so sure that she would beat it that I refused to even consider the possibility of her death until just before it actually happened.
While I know there are probably years like these in your life as well, I would urge you that whenever possible, look for the good in your life, and define your time by the good things rather than the bad. So for me, 2019 was the year my mom was declared clear of cancer, or the year I made my first online Etsy sale, or maybe even the year I met and wrote a poem about the Poet Laureate Emeritus of Kansas, but not the year my wonderful boss had to quit or the year my anxiety returned full force. So how will you define your 2019? I pray that you, like me, can find something good to define it by, but even if you can't, I pray you can still find some good from the past year to remember. 
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Changed and Transformed

I am currently starting the fourth week of an online Bible study based on the book Living So That: Making Faith-Filled Choices in the Midst of a Messy Life  by Wendy Blight. I was drawn to the study because of the title. When I first saw it, I thought, Living so that what? Where's the rest of the title?  I now realize that the title was referring to those verses in the Bible that have the words so that  in them. The book has five chapters, each split into five parts and having a memory verse tied to the topic of that chapter. In the study, we are doing one chapter a week, and can split up the five readings for the week however we want to. I choose to read them on weekdays right after breakfast so that  I start each work day with some time spent in God's Word. Chapter One is "Jesus Came So That," and the memory verse is John 3:16. I figured, I know that verse in two languages. I got this.  I didn't figure I would have any trouble with that week because I alre...
3 comments
Read more

Help Me Find It

Much of my life has not been easy. There are many times when God's will for my life didn't seem very clear. One of those times was just after I graduated college in December 2011. Less than a week after my graduation, I found I was not admitted into the school counseling program, which was my second choice of masters programs. I had been planning to get a master's in special education, but after two failed student teaching attempts, that future was no longer possible. So right before Christmas, I found out that other than having my apartment for another semester, there was really no good reason to return to Manhattan. I did return, and ended up taking a couple of classes. I considered looking into another master's degree program. After much prayer, I decided that instead of jumping into applying for another master's program, it would be better for me to return home at the end of the semester and get a job as a para so I could gain more experience working with childr...
Post a Comment
Read more

Bleed the Same

"Only love can drive out all the darkness What are we fighting for? We were made to carry one another We were made for more"-" Bleed the Same "~Mandisa Late last week, I was on Twitter, and I noticed quite a few posts about the school shooting that occurred on Valentine's Day. Most of the posts called for people to pray for the victims and their families, but others took a more combative tone on the issue. One of the ones that was particularly disturbing to me came from someone who is not only a good friend of mine, but also a Christian role model. This person insinuated that Republicans are a bunch of hypocrites because they call for immigration reform following terrorist attacks but don't want the shooting to be politicized because the families of the victims need to be left alone to grieve. Unfortunately, this is just the latest in a series of divisive tweets I have seen recently from this person, and they are by no means the only one doing this. I...
Post a Comment
Read more