This is the time of year when people often reflect back upon the past year and look forward to the upcoming year. I’m choosing not to dwell on the past year. I’ve had worse years but 2012 certainly doesn’t rank among my best. I’ve had some personal disappointments, some financial frustrations, and one of my cats even had to have surgery that cost me over $2000 because she ate a thread that got stuck and caused her intestines to rupture. Nevertheless, God is still good and I’m choosing not to complain.
I have decreed the year of 2013 as a year of jubilee in my life. God gave the Israelites an order to celebrate a jubilee every 50 years and while I still have a ways to go to reach that milestone I have decided to make 2013 a year of celebration.
I partly got this idea from a friend of mine (who incidentally I’m working on a web project with so you might be hearing him soon.) Every year he would decree the forthcoming year as “the year of …” as an indication of what he expected or what he hoped to work on for the year. Past themes for my friend were the year of breaking free, the year of accomplishment, and the year of transition.
I have declared 2013 to be the year of jubilee partly based on plan and partly based on premonition. I have a ton of projects that I plan on rolling out in 2013 that I’m really excited about. I always have projects in the works but I believe that a couple of these projects could end up being the biggest since I first started my website over a decade ago. So I’m really excited about that and I’m praying that God would bless those projects beyond my wildest imagination. And of course I’d appreciate your prayers as well.
The other reason I have declared 2013 to be the year of jubilee is because I really believe that God is going to bless the year for me. As I have endured some frustrations over the past year I’ve been reminded repeatedly that God would reward my endurance. I don’t want to make it sound as if God owes me anything because I’ve had a less than stellar year. God owes me nothing and this isn’t a matter of correcting a cosmic balance sheet that is out of balance.
Instead, this is a matter of holding onto the promises that God has made. God has plans for each of our lives. It’s not a guarantee that we won’t get sick and it is no promise that we’ll be wealthy. What I’m confident about however is that God isn’t through with me. This means that I have work to do and God has more work to do through me.
So that’s what this year jubilee is really about. I’m asking that God would bless what He yet has in store for me. I’m asking for wisdom to know how best to use the gifts that He’s already given me. And I’m asking for empowerment to use those gifts in great and wonderful ways to touch people in ways that I haven’t even thought of yet. And since I’m confident that God will do these things, I can already begin to celebrate what I know God will accomplish in 2013.