The new year is indeed very new; most of the 365 days allotted to us are still in front of us. As such, I have thoughts, lots and lots of random thoughts.
The first one is the big one. If you are reading this, God gave you another year, and you came through it. Be sure and tell him thank you; others were not afforded that blessing. And if you do not yet know him as your Lord and Savior, now would be a great time to take care of that since none of us have any assurances that we will be around to read or write a similar column this time next year. If you are not sure how to do that, you are welcome to email me; I would be honored to show you what the Scripture says about being saved.
I preached or taught 412 times in 2024. That is a whole lot of words, spoken publicly, often with distractions all around, and usually recorded. That anyone can ever do this without accidentally saying something incredibly stupid has always struck me as a minor miracle.
When I was younger, I got to spend a lot of time digging in fields for rocks and minerals. I still rock-hunt, though my hours for doing so are much more limited now. I still have many of the great specimens I found through the years, along with many others I have purchased along the way. But I have only found one partial arrowhead through the years. I would love to find some good place to hunt for them this year. I also want to find some yooperlites and petoskey stones.
Our church youth group will be snow-tubing in the North Carolina mountains in early January. If you are part of a church, make sure you invest heavily in your youth, both in time and in money. A church with no youth group is one generation away from dying.