2019

What does a new year mean? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Last night, like some of you, I stayed up to watch the ball come down. I normally stay up late at night anyway. I might as well do that. I didn’t care for any of the music being played at all. I just like the moment of seeing it become the new year.

I went to bed thinking about the new year. After all, I was born in 1980. I thought about what I have seen and did some checking to make sure. I was born when Carter was president and now Trump is. That means there have been seven presidents in my lifetime. There have been three Popes. As far as I know, there has been only one queen in England all this time.

This year, I will turn 39, which means I will be the age Jack Benny was at his prime. (Some younger readers might have to ask parents or even grandparents who that is.) I will have known the woman I love most for ten years this year and it will also be the tenth anniversary of my proposal to her.

When I started doing apologetics, I was leaning more towards a YEC perspective, a dispensational pre-trib futurist, and I did not have a clue on philosophy. Today, I am an OEC with no problem with evolutionary creationism, an orthodox Preterist, and Thomist in my philosophy. A lot has changed in my belief system over the years, but the focus on Jesus has never changed.

Ten years ago, I was living in Charlotte with a roommate. I have since lived back in Tennessee in my grandmother’s old house and now I live in an apartment in Cumming just outside of Atlanta. I was just blogging then. Now I am doing podcasts and looking forward to making regular YouTube videos.

And of course, major change. I was a single man. Now I am getting ready to celebrate nine years of marriage this year. That change cannot be left out.

Many of these changes would not have been predicted. Some could have, but not with exactitude. We would have known there would be new presidents and popes. There would be no certain way of knowing how many. Regardless of your position in life, we all take steps every day not knowing where they will take us. Some we regret. Some we do not. Some seem good at the start, but they end in tears. Others seem painful at the start, but they end in joy.

A new year will also always be full of new steps. No one knows what the year will hold. At the start of 2009, if you told me I would meet a girl I would love who would become my wife, I would have said, “That’s a great dream, but what are the odds?” if not laugh. The last laugh would have been on me. Things happen that I wasn’t expecting.

Now with 2019 upon us, I can have my hopes and dreams for the year, but I don’t know what will happen. Chesterton once said that blessed is the man who expects nothing, because he will always be surprised. I have no idea where God has me going this year, but I do know from Scripture it will work for His good and not only His, but my own as well.

I might know you who are reading this and I might not, but I hope you have a Happy New Year. I don’t know what the future has for you. I don’t know who will come into your life and who will leave your life.

I do know that the adventure begins a new chapter for you today. The year is open to you. Make the most of it. It’s God’s gift to you.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Support Deeper Waters on Patreon!