For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Jeremiah 29:11
Fourteen years, three years, six years, Anniversaries, they help us keep track of our lives. They give stability in a fast-moving world. We celebrate anniversaries that are as varied and different as we are. Marriage, birth, graduation, achievement, establishment, destruction, death; they are all worthy to be commemorated in their own way and we do commemorate them. They are annual anchors for humanity as we all try to get our heads around the incredibly complex simplicity of the thing we call time.
Too often we use them to measure success, or failure. They are dark tools in the hands of depression. They can be nasty weapons in the hands of hate and anger. They can be billboards of self-promotion. However as I look up at the fourteen pictures above, as I think of the many anniversaries, the anchor moments that have made up my life. I see the very hand of God leading me, sometimes across mountaintops of joy, sometime through the valley of the shadow of death and most often across the prairies of life with the ruts, briars and yes the incredible beauty of creation.
While the anniversaries stand out, I know that it is the steady influence in between those salient moments that God uses most to shape me into the man who He desires me to be. It is the time spent with him every….ok most mornings perusing His Word, praying over those in need or simply over those laid on my heart. Combine that with the common schedule of life, the friends, acquaintances and those who momentarily impact my life and who I am begins to take shape. The shape that God has planned for me. The shape that reflects His image through the image of His son Jesus Christ. It is that shape, that plan managed by God; “Yet, O LORD, you are our Father. We are the clay, you are the potter; we are all the work of your hand.” Isaiah 64:8; the result of my daily relationship with Him that prepares me for moments in my life that I will forever remember, both the joys and the trials.
Fan Into Flame Ministries 
