Take the Twilight Tour

I’ve been on this boat tour around the lake maybe a dozen times or more.

I’m here the day after Christmas and I’ve never seen it so crowded. Four boats are leaving the docks by the time I reach the ticket office and the last tour of the day is full.

This scenic boat tour around one of Orlando's prettiest neighborhoods is one that I always recommend to friends and family who come to visit.

A pontoon boat winds through a chain of lakes with views of stately homes, Florida wildlife and a historic college campus that's quite picturesque.

The boat drivers suddenly announce they’ll add a twilight tour but seats are limited. I grab a ticket and wait with the other holiday latecomers to board the last boat of the day.

As the boat chugs across the water under bridges so low I have to duck and through skinny canals that bump the boat, the wind is cool and the sun is setting. The other times I’ve been on this tour the sun has been blazing and bright.

This scenery looks much different to me now at dusk. The shadows and swirls of gray clouds in the sky make the scene feel unfamiliar.

Flocks of birds sit atop the trees as the boat cruises by, and the homes' outdoor twinkling lights are coming on, mixing melancholy and cheer.

The boat ride is surprisingly strange yet lovely. This familiar scenery looks entirely different in a new light.

The brink of a new year is the time I usually think about intentions and a word that will inspire me for the next 365 days.

But I’m not sure just one word is meant to encapsulate this new year of 2018 for me.

It seems as if there are innumerable words and thoughts vying for my attention that unless I'm on the alert and watchful, I'll miss the call to move onward and forward.

I wonder if sometimes the old familiar pathways of our lives can become so predictable that we fail to recognize the new thing God is doing because it feels so different, challenging and maybe even a little uncomfortable.

But I need to be reminded.

{And maybe you do, too?}

About these verses from the book of Isaiah that I've read a hundred times over the years. They stare starkly up at me in black and white as I turn the page today, as if they've been waiting there for some time for me.

Forget the former things;

    do not dwell on the past.

See, I am doing a new thing!

    Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?

I am making a way in the wilderness

    and streams in the wasteland.  - Is. 43:18-19

So I wonder if maybe this is the year that you should take the twilight tour, too?

Buy the last ticket.

Step off the dock.

Get in the boat.

There's no guarantee, of course, that any of the things we're uncertain about in our lives will turn out as we hope.

But keeping our eyes on God, we know nothing is impossible, and with faith we just might be able to walk on the water.

Will you join me in hoping that 2018 is the year we discover something new we've never before experienced with God?

I'm joining my friends at Holley Gerth's place for Coffee for your Heart.