Am I going to be Strong for another year?

    But those who trust in the Lord will find new strength. They will soar high on wings like eagles. They will run and not grow weary. They will walk and not faint. (Isaiah 40:31, New Living Translation)

 Oh, boy, here we are, finally in the new year. The year we’ve probably been anticipating more than any other, if only because it means the end of 2020.

 Every year, for the last seven years, I’ve chosen a word of the year, a word to guide me, to focus on, to keep me afloat when life is dragging me down. My word for 2020 was strength.

 Wow, and didn’t we all need a great deal of strength to get through this past year. Strength of mind, body and spirit. An added dose of strength to get through most days and even strength just to get out of bed and go to work some days.

 Unless, of course, you were unemployed or forced to work from home, in which case, maybe you didn’t have to get out of bed on time every day. But then, didn’t it require that much more strength to get going each day?

 Maybe you had loved ones sick and dying in 2020 and needed to be stronger than usual to deal with all of that. (I raise my hand.) Maybe you or a loved one suffered a somewhat life-altering injury. You needed to be strong to heal your body and even stronger emotionally if you had to help your loved one heal themselves. (Raise my hand again.)

 And through it all, as much as I fell back on my word of the year, sometimes, I lost sight of the fact that this strength doesn’t come from within me. My strength comes from above.

   I lift up my eyes to the mountains— where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth. (Psalm 121:1-2, New International Version)

 We need to always remember that. No matter what life hands us, no matter what we have to do to get through it, God is the One who is there taking our hand, holding us up, getting us to the other side of sadness, tragedy and all our other struggles.

 But here, we are, as mentioned in the beginning, in a new year. Should I hang unto my word “strength” for another year? Or is there a different word which God has placed on my heart to strengthen me this year in a different way? You’ll have to come back next Sunday to find out.