As another year opens we have opportunity for reflection on the past and for consideration of the future. As we see our days passing — passing swifter than a weaver’s shuttle, as the Word of God describes them — what need there is to stop for a moment and take stock of our situation. What of the past? What of the future?
Reflection on the past recalls, not only the joy of seasons of blessing when the Lord was pleased to favour us in His providence or in His grace, but also those times of adversity through which the Lord saw fit to cause us to pass. Nor can we forget, in contemplating what is past, our many sins and failings and back-slidings. We cannot but have sad reflections on these yet we have reason to rejoice that there is a fountain opened to the house of David and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem for sin and for uncleanness. There we may betake ourselves that we may be washed and made clean.
When we turn to the future, we turn to what is yet unknown. We do not know what a day or an hour will bring to pass. What the future is, however, is not hid from God. His people can rejoice in this. Job could say: “He knoweth the way that I take.” The people of God might well despair as they look forward to the days or years that lie ahead were it not for the Lord’s assurance that He will be with them and go before them. As He led Israel of old by the pillar of the cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night so He leads His people still.
As we step forth into another year is there some word of direction that might guide us in our walk in this world? We think that Paul’s exhortation to the Corinthians is such a word, where he says: “He that glorieth let him glory in the Lord.” Putting into practice this motto would surely make our prospects bright. For if we made the Lord the great object of our glorying, everything else would fall into its rightful place.
How far we are from acting in the way that Paul directs — He that glorieth let him glory in the Lord. We glory in the creature. The sin, unbelief and idolatry of our own heart is such that we glory in man. We even glory in ourselves and thereby rob God of His glory. Our object of glorying must not be man but something altogether higher. Our object of glorying must not be earthly for earthly things, indeed all created things, are too unstable to glory in. It is in God that we must glory. Here we have an object upon which we may set our minds and hearts and we can never glory too much in Him.
To glory in God, we must glory in Him through the Lord Jesus Christ. It is in Christ that He makes Himself known as an object of desire. We may glory in Him for what He is in Himself and for what He is in Christ. What avenues open out in this way for glorying in the Lord. He is worthy of our glorying in Him. What a revelation He has given of Himself in the Person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. May we not glory in Him in every aspect of that revelation? What an Object we have for glorying in the Lord Jesus Christ at all times — in His death, resurrection and ascension. We may glory in the Cross, that is, in Christ in His sufferings and death. The more our minds are taken up with these things, the less will they be set on the things of the world, and the more will we aspire after higher things.
As another year breaks, may we be enabled to say with the apostle: “Forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press forward toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.” Let it be our firm resolve in the strength of divine grace as we go forward into another year to endeavour no longer to glory in the flesh, or in man, or in anything of this world, but to glory only in the Lord.