NEW YEAR @2007

The year before our eyes(J. C. Philpot)"As your days--so shall your strength be." Deuteronomy 33:25The year before our eyes may hold in its bosom events which may deeply concern and affect us.We do not know what is to come. What personal trials, what family trials, what providential trials may await us--we do not know. Sickness may attack our bodies, death enter our families, difficulties beset our circumstances, trials and temptations exercise our minds, snares entangle our feet, and many dark and gloomy clouds, make our path one of heaviness and sorrow. Every year hitherto has brought its trials in its train; and how can we expect the coming year to be exempt?If, indeed, we are His, whatever our trials may be, His grace will be sufficient for us.He who has delivered, can and will deliver.And He who has brought us thus far on the road, who has so borne with our crooked manners in the wilderness and never yet forsaken us--though we have so often forsaken Him--will still lead us along; will still guide and guard us, and be our God, our Father and our Friend--not only to the end of the next year, if spared to see it, but the end of our life.Blessed with His presence, we need fear no evil; favored with His smile, we need dread no foe;upheld by His power, we need shrink from no trial; strengthened by His grace, we need panic at no suffering.Knowing what we are and have been when left to ourselves--the slips that we have made, the snares that we have been entangled in, the shame and sorrow that we have procured to ourselves--well may we dread to go forth in the coming year alone. Well may we say, "If Your Presence does not go with us--do not send us up from here!" Exodus 33:15