2026 will be a better year if the Lord gets his due and we don’t
Ascribe to the Lord the glory due his name! (Psalm 29:2)
His due is glory and our due is whatever is the opposite of glory. What he deserves is praise and what we deserve is, well, not praise. I can’t honestly say that this summarizes all of my thoughts from this year, but looking back, I sure wish it had. I’m not under any condemnation or anything, I think I’m pretty much up to date on confessing my sins to him (and sometimes to others), trusting that he forgave me each time I let myself (and him) down. But there’s no doubt that he didn’t always get the glory he deserves from me.
There’s another saying of mine (I don’t think I stole it from anyone else, but maybe I did so far back that I don’t remember it) – “The goal of goals is the glory of God.” That is, the mother of all goals is for God to be glorified in, through, and around our lives. I think it’s one of those real big ideas in the Bible, and it’s a good idea to keep this big idea in mind when – well – pretty much all the time.
We’d all be better off if, before we went off and did anything, we asked: “What does God get out of this? How does this point to and reflect his glory? Is this for my gain or his glory?” In 2026 there have been more occasions than can be counted in which I either failed to ask that question or failed to care about the answer. Did he always get his due from me? Maybe the better question is – Did he even often get what was due him? Well, I guess that’s between him and me, but it’s important to think about anyway as we move forward to the next 365 days full of opportunities to give him what’s due him.
2026 will be a better year if the Lord gets his due and we don’t
“Their end will be what their actions deserve.” (2 Corinthians 11:15)
By the last part, I mean that it would be a good year if we don’t get what we deserve – the operative term being, “deserve.” You’re an American-Dreamer if pretty much all your dreams are about you, your advancement, and your prosperity and you have the mistaken notion that you “deserve” for those dreams to be fulfilled. I think you’re mistaken if you think you’re entitled to happiness and contentment, and that God or the world or your boss or your spouse owes it to you. I think that’s why so many people are unhappy, because they think that happiness is their due, when in actuality our due, as twisted humans, is judgment. “The wages of sin,” said Paul is, “death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus.” What we deserve, is death. Death is what we’ve earned, but what he gives to us for free, if we’ll take it, is life.
If we’ll take his version of life and live it in such a way as to give God his due, it has the potential for being a quite nice life in this world with the promise of being a very very nice life when the world is renewed!
Happy New Year!
barney wiget 