I recently turned 17. It was somewhat of a big birthday for me, because something about the sound of "17" sounds older for whatever reason. In one way, I only turned a day older; in another sense, I've entered a whole new chapter of my life. How this chapter is written...well, that's a decision I'll have to make every single day - and with more than 350 "pages" yet to be written, this year can be either good or bad. It can be a time of great spiritual growth, complacency, or even of drifting from God. But the choice is mine. Nobody will make it for me. But let me say here and now that I am resolved to dedicate this upcoming year to the Lord. I don't want to see one sunrise, or one moonlit night, with Him. After all, of what beauty is a sunrise without knowing the One Who made it?

David said in Psalm 34:8, "O taste and see that the Lord is good..." My prayer is that each day, Christ would become sweeter to my taste - that from today until the day I die, I would not cease to fall deeper and deeper in love with Him. Whatever may come my way, I am convinced that neither, "tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword...nor death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, not things to come, nor height, nor depth, or any other creature" will be able to separate me from His love, or to stop me from loving Him (Romans 8:35-39).