When New Isn't, Any More

The thing about beginnings is that they move so quickly into something else.
New cars depreciate the moment you drive them off the car dealer's lot.
Honeymoons last a few days or months. Babies quickly grow up into toddlerhood. “New” just doesn't last all that long.
It's usually easy -- fun, even, to make a good beginning. It's not always so easy to make a good middle, or a strong finish.
We've had enough time now, this new year, for a bit of the new to smudge off, for one or two of our resolutions to have cracked a bit, to see the difficulties embedded in our opportunities.
We can see the middle; maybe it looks tedious, even disappointing.
No matter how excited we are to begin something new, eventually we get to a place where the “new” has rubbed off, and all we are left with is the work required to make the promise reality.
How do we keep on in the face of difficulty, disappointment, boredom?
If we've committed our plans and hopes to our heavenly Father, He is committed to working good out of whatever situation we find ourselves in -- whether it is difficult, tedious, or not quite what we'd hoped for or expected.
Our job, then, is to trust Him. We do that by doing the next right thing (whether or not we feel like it) and the next one, and the next one, until we have worked our way through the middle, all the way to the end of whatever we are working on.
By choosing whatever is right, whatever is honorable, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, we demonstrate our trust in the One who works to bring good in and around us.
It's not easy.
It is worthwhile.
And eventually, He makes all things new.