The above photo is one I took a couple of years ago at Bear Valley Springs, CA near where my oldest son, the policeman, lives.

December 21, 2005

A SPECIAL GIFT FOR YEAR�S END�

It happened a long time ago. I was a young mother with three small children. Our family had just spent a wonderful year�an almost magical year in a small town just outside Baltimore, Maryland. We had enjoyed all the wonderful experiences of a tiny�almost New England, part Pennsylvania Dutch�community nestled between a woodsy seashore and the Chesapeake Bay. Small streams ran out to sea just below our town home. The woods were filled with brambly bushes of fat and juicy wild blackberries, which we gathered in early summer. Often our little kitchen filled with the aroma of pies baking in the oven.

The children safely roamed the edges of those woods, the nearby fields, and ventured down into the surrounding neighborhood on hot summer days, to buy homemade snow cones from the open door of a friendly garage.

Of course, there were all the traditional celebrations in which small towns participate. The Fourth of July parade featured just about every local resident. in one way or another, and the remainder cheered them on, waving flags and sparklers as they passed. My daughter learned to twirl a baton. That was probably her first step toward eventually becoming a captain on her high school drill team many years later. My oldest son joined, and then became captain of the school Safety Patrol, and he is now the policeman who wrote the December 5th entry for this journal.

When the season arrived displaying the peak of autumnal glory on the eastern seaboard, we took a road trip up through Pennsylvania, new Jersey, New York, and on to Boston and then over to Nyack, Valley Forge, and on back home. We bought red apples at a roadside stand in Rhode Island, gazed at the tall sails on the ships in the harbor of Mystic, Connecticut. We pondered an unimpressive Plymouth Rock, a very impressive West Point, and recalled the history of Valley Forge, before crossing again through the rolling hills of the Dutch country with covered bridges and Hershey�s �chocolate kiss� streetlights. So much to see. Such a wonderful time in our family�s life.

We had just began to think about permanently relocating in that area when we were quickly transferred back to southern California. But we had sold our home, and felt like we were on a pilgrimage, searching for an unknown destination.

At that time in my journey, I was consistently following the daily devotions in a well-known old classic devotional book, �Streams In the Desert.� It seemed fitting. We were headed back into the desert. And I surely hoped we could find a place where streams of life flowed freely. It so happened that our return trip took place between Christmas and the New Year.

I want to share with you, a portion of the December 31 entry in this book. This is my �end of year� gift to you, and you can see what it meant to me as we drove west, across the country. I have always remembered this page, for many reasons, not the least of which being that very quickly we settled in this small Simi Valley. A place of hills and valleys, and�well, just read:

The land whither ye go to possess it is a land of hills and valleys and drinketh water of the rain of heaven: a land which the Lord thy God careth for: the eyes of the Lord are always upon it, from the beginning of the year even unto the end of the year" (Deut. 11:11-12).

Today dear friends, we stand upon the verge of the unknown. There lies before us the new year and we are going forth to possess it. Who can tell what we shall find? What new experiences, what changes shall come, what new needs shall arise? But here is the cheering, comforting, gladdening message from our Heavenly Father, "The Lord thy God careth for it." "His eyes are upon it away to the ending of the year."

All our supply is to come from the Lord. Here are springs that shall never dry; here are fountains and streams that shall never be cut off. Here, anxious one, is the gracious pledge of the Heavenly Father. If He be the Source of our mercies they can never fail us. No heat, no drought can parch that river, "the streams whereof make glad the city of God."

The land is a land of hills and valleys. It is not all smooth nor all down hill. If life were all one dead level the dull sameness would oppress us; we want the hills and the valleys. The hills collect the rain for a hundred fruitful valleys. Ah, so it is with us! It is the hill difficulty that drives us to the throne of grace and brings down the shower of blessing; the hills, the bleak hills of life that we wonder at and perhaps grumble at, bring down the showers. How many have perished in the wilderness, buried under its golden sands, who would have lived and thriven in the hill-country; how many would have been killed by the frost, blighted with winds, swept desolate of tree and fruit but for the hill-stern, hard, rugged, so steep to climb. God's hills are a gracious protection for His people against their foes!

We cannot tell what loss and sorrow and trial are doing. Trust only. The Father comes near to take our hand and lead us on our way today. It shall be a good, a blessed new year!

Over the ensuing years, it seems as though life has �thrown the book at me� at times. But I think that there has not been a passing New Year that those opening thoughts have not come to my mind. �The land you are going to possess�.a land of hills and valleys ...it drinks water from the rain of heaven�the eyes of the Lord are on it from the beginning of the year unto the end.�

For me, there has been such comfort in that. And it has proven to be true. In spite of, and in the midst of�whatever.

These words are my New Year�s gift to you.

Text � copyright 2003 - 2008 The Homespun Philosopher

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