Chasing Chariots

This one is for you. 
The one rolling out of bed and lifting the shades to reveal a sky draped with January, the month of hope and despair. 
The heart that's following the echo of eternity tugging them into another year. 
The brave soul where war-torn thoughts struggle between bright faith and the bitter cold of a land frozen by a winter that lingers in shades of ice and gray.    
Emerging from the advent of Christmas plants a beautiful but difficult reality in the last days of the year.  Though the truth and the majesty of Christmas has renewed our spirits once more, the real waiting goes on.  For citizens of heaven still upon the earth, the true Advent and the longed for arrival of Christ once more continues.

Time dawns another year, and we continue to hone our earthly calling in the light of the King’s appeal to the world through us.  Sharpen resolutions upon the stone.   
Upon the surge of eager newness wiping clean the year’s canvas with a dusting of snow lies the battle line.  Drawn anew, the giants rise to oppose us.  Perhaps struggles born out of years of fighting, or maybe the glinting steel of new enemies who seek to destroy, but this is where we find ourselves. 
This is where you find yourself, brave soul watching January roll in once more.    The world goes not well, yet the kingdom comes. 

I see you at the kitchen table, sipping strength from a coffee mug and sleepily dusting off a dream, that talent-tool God once placed in your hands.  You wonder what to do with it, how to make it holy.
  Your limbs long to crawl back into bed and maybe slip safely under the sheets of last year and forget about the challenges marching to meet you across the months toward another December. 
But fragile pages of the holy pen resolve upon your heart, a soul-resolution to depend even more deeply on Him and to administer grace with what has been given so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. 
Gift of days.  Lord of Years. 
Fallen foundations drag us earthward, and the only strength and endurance that allow us to climb the peaks ahead with joy lie in our very weakness, where his increase is mighty.   
Dreams may glint foolish to earth-veiled eyes.  I know because I’ve worn false lenses many times.  Distortion warps illumination and skews the light.  It makes cheap the meaningful, and at the foot of January, my mind whispers aimless. 

Of God, my heart says "Seek his face."  But how to make prayer the weapon that drives back demons rising to face me once more on the battleground of the new year?  How to refine strengths into sacred heralds that declare the hope of Christ and his return, inscribing not with ink but with grace that etches itself onto the very fabric of the human heart?
Renewed mercy recurring at dawn, his faithfulness wakes the world, and I, like you, put my hand to the mountain of the year to move it and be moved. 
The story of love descending cleanses anew the ransomed soul, clothing it for the days to come.  And a voice scatters the aimless strains with a song of beauty and a vision of resolve. 
Hallow gifts multicolored from heaven.  Draw deep in my soul, my hands inspire.   O Lord, send me out into your world.
Bring me a chariot of fire.  

Dream with me, you hard workers and travelers, prophets and saints who haunt the January morning struggling to don hope against the cold.  Let us climb the heights that await and the take the adventures set before us.  Let the mountains stir our spirits to a place of prayer that fears neither height nor opposition.   
Of course, it might be proven true in the end, that once more I’ve thought too deeply about things.  I’m too much among the clouds and not enough upon the ground, where struggle and sleeplessness drive home the harshness of reality. 
Then again, that’s the thing about elevation, it brings you closer to the sky, and a heart nearer to Heaven finds not only star dust and snow but truth, and that—with clarity.
Here’s to the climb of 2016.   
It is a gift, and this one's for you.     

Images via:  Huffingtonpost.com, tumblr.com, amazpic.com, mbart.com All work subject to copyright by the author. Use by permission only.  2016.