Beginning a new journey in a new year

I write in my new Mary Engelbreit 2008 calendar and listen to a silent house of sleeping New Year's eve party poopers. Here I sit thanks to the dark chocolate Dove bar S presented me with earlier. I look back through my 2007 calendar and am startled by the things the Lord has done in the last twelve months. I look at a change of heart, a new direction, a baby born and lost to another, a nine month old baby placed in our arms, a day of renewal and recommitment on our fifteenth anniversary, goodbyes to dear, dearest ones, an astonishing proposal of adoption, an even more astonishing fall into love with a little doll of a boy. I look at the night spent at a friend's house playing games, and how I rocked that little boy before I even knew him or cared for him. I see how God ever so gently makes His will become mine, and how He carries it out in my life for His glory and purpose. I see how He knows, oh, so much better than me, what should be and what will be. I see His tender love for me and the tears stick in my throat at my unworthiness and at how I am so "prone to wander." I think about the yearly resolutions and how they lasted (or mostly didn't) and I pray and ask for enough of Him in me to just trust Him every day, to take my self to Him and leave my self there. I think about all those resolves I want to achieve, and I give them up...counting on Him to achieve in me what He wants, and knowing that He will do just that if I am open and listening. Help me to listen this year, Lord.

Tune my heart
Teach me
Fix me upon You
Draw me to the place
Lead me safely home
Bind my heart by your goodness
Take it and seal it

May God receive the loudest praise in 2008.

Come Thou Fount Of Every Blessing
(John Wyeth)
Come, Thou fount of every blessing,
Tune my heart to sing Thy grace.
Streams of mercy, never ceasing,
Call for songs of loudest praise.

Teach me some melodious sonnet,
Sung by flaming tongues above;
Praise His name, I'm fixed upon it,
Name of God's redeeming love.

Hitherto, Thy love has blessed me,
Thou hast drawn me to this place.
And I know Thy hand will lead me,
Safely home by Thy good grace.

Jesus sought me when a stranger,
Wandering from the fold of God;
He to rescue me from danger,
Bought me with His precious blood.

O to grace, how great a debtor,
Daily I'm constrained to be.
Let Thy goodness, like a fetter,
Bind my wandering heart to Thee.
Prone to wander, Lord I feel it,
Prone to leave the God I love;
Here's my heart, O take and seal it,
Seal it for Thy courts above.