Old And New

Old and New

When the phone rang at 7:15 a.m. on December 31, I knew without looking whose voice I’d hear. My dad’s.

“Happy birthday!” he boomed when I answered.

“Now which one is this?” he asked—and for half a second I thought he might not remember. Then I heard “Sixteen?”

He’d set me up. The corners of my mouth turned up, and my day was officially made.

“No, Daddy,” I said. “It’s seventeen.”

“I missed a year,” he laughed. “How’d that happen?”

I am far from seventeen. I have boots older than seventeen. To someone who is seventeen, I am certain I am identified as “old.” I wouldn’t argue—there are mornings I feel every one of my years. But there are moments I forget them too.

I forget when I’m with a roomful of friends I’ve known for life—friends whose crayons I borrowed and who I giggled through slumber parties with. I forget when I pull on those beat-up Tony Lamas and sink into their perfect broken-in-ness one more time. You’d think I might remember when I open the pages of my latest crumbling Bible and see the highlights and marginalia of my own hand—but I don’t. Instead I think, Today I’ll discover something here I’ve never seen before, because your mercies are new—utterly new!—every morning of my life.

I love so many things about this God I’ve followed since childhood. But perhaps the thing I love most is that he is always old and new. He was the shaping of my youth and the North Star of my early adulthood. He was the tall mast of my thirties and the strong anchor of my forties. And I’m certain he will be my beacon of hope in the years to come.

Where will he meet me today? I can’t say for sure, but I am certain that he will. What will I learn by sundown? I don’t know now, but give me a few hours, and I’ll report back. Where will we go, my good God and I, when I pull on these old boots and step out my front door? He knows. I do not. But he’ll tell me when I need to know—and until then, I’ll treasure his old, new company every blessed step of the way.

His compassions never fail. They are new every morning.

Lamentations 3:22-23, NIV