Lighten Up

One of the Christmas gifts I received this year was a 2025-26 planner. Sure, I could just use my phone’s digital calendar, but somehow it’s easier to “see” and get a better feel for what’s ahead if I can hold it in my hands and visualize the months ahead on the printed page. Besides, my new planner came with fun stickers to mark special days. Who doesn’t love fun stickers? 

I really appreciate how functional it is, but it’s big and fairly heavy to carry around. Looking at it more closely, I saw that it’s an 18-month planner. So it has 6 months worth of pages that have already passed. I thought, why should I carry around all this extra weight? Maybe I could tear out the old pages and lighten it up a bit. So, I began to tear out the pages one by one, being careful not to damage the binding. As it turned out, it wasn’t all that difficult.

Suddenly, a thought occurred to me…Ha! Figuratively speaking, tearing out those old pages is exactly what most of us need to do as we enter this new year. The past is, well…passed! Why not rip out the pages of past failures, regrets, hurts, and the memories of sin long forgiven by Him? Why carry it around with us? It’s heavy, isn’t it?  What if we dared to move forward? What if we dared to start fresh and enter the New Year with only one resolve…

“…but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.” 

Philippians 3:13-14 NKJV