Keep Moving Forward!
( I felt led to post this for some New Year's encouragement! May you be blessed!)
Did this year seem to fly by, no, zoom past you? Sure did for me.
I can’t believe the year facing us is 2025. Are you ready for it?
The year may throw a multitude of things at us, but we will just keep moving forward, right?
That phrase “keep moving forward” reminds me of a Christmas episode on M*A*S*H. As the episode opens, Father Mulcahy is sitting in the mess tent waiting for someone to show up for his weekly sermon. And as no one comes, he fills the empty time by writing a letter to his sister, which is heard throughout the episode as a voiceover.
With feelings of self-doubt, he tells her he’s frustrated that he’s not more effective. He feels he doesn’t make a difference in the lives of those in the M*A*S*H unit.
“I’m almost desperate to be useful, Sis,” he laments.
Later in the episode, Mulcahy is devastated with himself for an unfortunate altercation with a patient. He goes outside for a quiet brood in the dark night and frigid temperature.
Hawkeye follows him and sits down next to him, starting a conversation to encourage him, to which Mulcahy responds, angry with himself, “I’m Christ’s representative. ‘Suffer the little children to come unto Me.’ ‘Do unto others.’ I’m not supposed to just say that stuff; I’m supposed to do it!”
Hawkeye answers, “All you’re supposed to do is the best you can.”
“Some best,” Mulcahy grumbles.
Hawkeye responds, “Best is best.”
After a little more conversing, Mulcahy says, “It isn’t just that. I don’t seem to make a difference here. I hang around on the edge of effectiveness...”
(His words cut deep into my soul. Frustrated. Ineffective. Desperate to be useful. Ever feel that way?)
At the end of the episode, the M*A*S*H gang ooh and ahh as they look out the mess tent windows at the compound being covered in snow. A truce was supposed to be in effect, but a truck pulls up and brings more wounded.
As the gang rushes out to help, Mulcahy’s words are heard, “You know, Sis, it doesn’t matter whether you feel useful or not when you’re moving from one disaster to another. The trick, I guess, is to just keep moving.”
And that’s the lesson for the New Year: Just keep moving! And moving forward, doing the best you can.
Paul said in Philippians 3:13b-14, “One thing I do, forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.” (RSV)
No matter what the trucks of life may try to deliver to us, let’s keep moving forward through the year, “straining forward to what lies ahead,” even if we merely fall forward! Let’s keep getting up, moving on, and trying to do our best to “press on to reach that goal.”
And that’s it, dear friends. Just keep moving forward and doing the best you can.
You’ll make it. The Lord is with you!
Keep moving…forward!
Thank you, dear, sweet readers, for the precious time you spend with me, reading and commenting on what the Lord places on this ol’ heart.
My prayer for each of you is that you do the best you can throughout the New Year and that you may be effective and useful, making a difference in the lives of those you around you.
And may the Lord fill your New Year with an abundance of everything you need and may you be overwhelmed by His blessings...Lynn
Sorry!
