Luke 1:28 "Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you."

God speaks of that which will be as though it has already come to pass. The people to whom God has spoken form a list which stretches through history and the Scripture: Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Sarah, Jacob, Moses, Deborah, Gideon, Samuel, David, Solomon, Elijah...the list goes on, stretching to the present time to include each of us. Just as they did, we sometimes struggle to realize that it is us He is speaking of when we receive His Word.

So much of the time, we try to "exercise" our faith to get the solution to a looming financial problem or a lingering physical ailment. We claim God's healing power and we raise our hands and our voices, then we pause and open one eye to see if we need to pray louder or longer. Don't laugh -- we've all done it. God understands it. We are growing and learning a step at a time.

How often we want to be "on the beach." How nice it would be to just drift, free of responsibilities, living each day as it comes, not worried about what other people think. How relaxing to listen to the soothing sounds of the waves, enjoy the delicate beauty of the seashells and worn smoothness of old driftwood, appreciating the enormity of creation, the expanse of sky overhead, the ever-changing cloudscape against the enduring solidity of the landscape. And then the car horn behind us honks, or the phone on our desk rings, or the youngest child cries, and we are back in our day-to-day routine world, where we pick up from where we were before and carry on.

This is a day that we look at as a starting point in our year, a new beginning. It is a time of separation on the calendar, when previous cycles have ended and a new one begins, a time of closures and fresh starts. A new tax year starts, a new school semester begins, new laws take effect, many institutes and processes make this a dividing point between the old and the new.