What is it that prompts us to want to make resolutions about all the things we want to do better in the coming year? Isn’t it the consciousness of all the ways that we have failed to live up to what we wanted to be and do in the past year? Why do we think we have it in our power to do better in the new year?

But has the Lord ever failed us? Why not look back at the year that is ending and remember the many ways in which He has helped us, and then go forward into the new year with the confidence that He will once more lead us to many victories, large and small?

As the children of Israel wandered through the wilderness for forty years, it seemed the men who came out of Egypt could not remember from one day to the next how the Lord had helped them. They continually complained to Moses, “Why have you brought us into this wilderness so that our children will die here?” But it was the fathers who had come out of Egypt who died in the wilderness because every time a new difficulty presented itself they could not believe that God could help them.

It was the children who grew up in the wilderness who entered the Promised Land, those born in Egypt and those born in the wilderness. They saw God working continually to help and sustain them and trusted He would continue to do so. They crossed the Jordan and in just four battles they had control of all the land.

Two of those who had been adult men when they left Egypt survived to enter the Promised Land, Joshua and Caleb. Caleb was the older, he had been forty when they left Egypt and was eighty when they came into the land. As Joshua was dividing the land, Caleb came to him and said, “Remember that mountain where we saw the giants? Give me that mountain, if so be the LORD will be with me, then I shall be able to drive them out, as the LORD said.” And so he did, it doesn’t even sound like it was much of a battle.

May we enter the new year with the faith of Caleb, remembering that “Hitherto hath the LORD helped us,” and trusting that He will continue to help us.