Good morning, world. Things are looking pretty good from the front porch of my farm in Virginia today. It’s windy and cold but I’m beginning this new day of a new week with the hope of Spring – a new beginning just around the corner. As I approached the Throne of the Living God to give thanks for it all, He reminded me that every new day is an opportunity for a New Beginning with Him. All the woes of yesterday are gone and all the Promises of tomorrow are enough to consume the Heart with joy. It’s not always easy to leave yesterday behind knowing it can never be repeated, but it’s ALWAYS replaced by the New and it’s Promised to be filled with New Beginnings just the way He says it is. No matter what each day brings, God has a Plan designed with Perfection, and THAT alone should be enough to fill every Heart with Joy.

It can be so easy to live in the past or to obsess over the future, but we lose out on Joy if we do too much of either one. No amount of fretting or wishing can cause yesterday to be repeated again – the biggest motivation to Live without regrets, that’s for sure. All the beauty can be stored up and savored forever as we push the replay button at will. Memories are a precious gift from the Lord! Not all the pain from yesterday can just be set aside when we lose a loved one or suffer some other sort of agony. That pain will run its course and it will dim in time IF we allow it to be our past and not allow it to dictate our future. Life goes on for the living even when we’re in so much pain we sometimes wish it wouldn’t…and God ALWAYS has a New Beginning after the season of pain. He cares about our hurt…He even stores up our tears in a jar…but God doesn’t want us to Live in the past…He wants to show us a New Beginning. When we can get to the point of “releasing” the pain, the future will be filled with the kind of Beauty that can slowly override the pain. This is the Key to endurance in a Journey sometimes filled with pain.

Not living in the past is one thing, obsessing over the future is an entirely different story. When we spend more time thinking about the future than we do about today, we miss the blessings of the New Beginnings that come with each new day and we overlook the beauty in the rush. Tomorrow will come soon enough, and with it will come plenty of good and bad because that’s what the Journey of Life looks like. But tomorrow isn’t promised to any of us and we have no idea what the future holds in His Perfect Plan for our lives. Planning for the future…having goals for the future…excitement about the future…that’s one thing – but when the future overrides the New Beginning of today, we can easily squander a life away without even knowing it. His Word says “Each day has enough trouble of its own”…and “Who can add a single moment to life through worry?”…so I take His advice each day and focus on the New Beginning…more than the past and MORE than my future here on earth.

I’m celebrating Spring before it arrives and I’m savoring this New Beginning as if it’s the last one I’ll ever live. I’ll see each new experience or each new encounter as a Gift intended just for me on this new day and I’ll be living as if there’s no tomorrow. After this life I have a New Beginning that is so beautiful that the Bible says, ‘Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, Nor have entered into the heart of man The things which God has prepared for those who love Him.” Now THAT New Beginning is something worth obsessing over!!

How about you?