You know how people talk about those years that make them breathe a sigh of relief when the clock turns on January 1?  The literal side of me doesn’t understand that because you wake up on January 1 with the same issues you had on December 31.  The figurative, writer side of me loves that whole “new page” thing. Symbolism makes me happy.  A couple of years ago, I dropped by my alma mater to visit with my favorite English professor, who was retiring.  Here is why I love that man so much:  when I knocked on his door, he said, “Jodie!  I just thought of you last week.  We were discussing Tennyson and I remembered how much you loved discussing his symbolism.”  A dozen years after I graduated, and he remembered that.  Either he is amazing, or I am really, really obsessed with the symbolic nature of literature.  That could honestly go either way.

It seems like 2011 treated a lot of people really badly.  I have friends of my heart who got their biggest brooms and shooed 2011 out the door with no shortage of “good riddance” and maybe a few kicks as the year passed.  We have prayed together and shed tears together.  My heart has ached for them.  I pray with everything in me that 2012 brings some heavy duty deliverance for them.

As I was praying for them and for some personal issues we are dealing with, God kept turning this one song around in my head.  Chris Tomlin is amazing when it comes to getting to the heart of God.  This song brings me to my knees in awe whenever I hear it, and that reminder is all I need to fall in love with God and trust Him all over again.  He’s bigger than anything we face.  There’s nothing He can’t handle… easily.  It’s easy to forget when the world is in our faces, but it’s a fundamental truth.  Our God is greater.

-JB