It’s pretty hard to remember something you didn’t know in the first place. That fact could, sooner or later, put a lot of people in jeopardy when they come face to face with God.

God tells us repeatedly in the Bible to remember His mighty acts. That involves two crucial steps: You have to know the acts themselves. And you have to recognize them as coming from God.

Life is warfare. If not, we are losing. Right up to the end Paul urges “Fight the good fight” (1 Timothy 6:12), and signs off from this poor world with “I have fought the good fight” (2 Timothy 4:7). How vexed he would be if we thought this pretty poetry.

I grew up in a Jewish household, went to six years of Hebrew school three days a week after public school, and chanted my way through a bar mitzvah service at age 13. I then started going evenings to a school for studying the Talmud, which is made up of ancient rabbinical debates. One edition runs 73 volumes.

It’s the classic quest story: the hero (or heroine) is toiling in the mundane fields or shops of everyday life when the summons occurs—a special calling or challenge. Gandalf appears in the Shire; Lucy walks through the back of the wardrobe; the burdened Pilgrim flees his doomed city.

The adventure begins.

One of our popular interviews last year was with Barbara Duguid, who grew up in the mission field and then earned a degree in medical technology that equipped her to head to a mission hospital in Liberia. She’s the author of Extravagant Grace: God’s Glory Displayed in Our Weakness and Streams of Mercy: Prayers of Confession and Celebration. She’s also married to a fine theologian, Iain Duguid. Some 1,200 words from the Q&A were in our Oct. 27 issue.

Someone texted me, “What’s a Christian definition of ‘success,’” so I opened the dictionary and wrote it down: “the accomplishment of an aim or purpose”—because the Bible means by “success” pretty much what the butcher and the baker mean.

Abraham’s servant asked God for success in finding Isaac a bride—by which he meant it would be nice to find Isaac a bride and not have ridden a lumpy camel all the way to Haran for nothing. God answered and gave him, first shot, a maiden to take home to the master. Success.

The people who walked in darkness
have seen a great light;
those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness,
on them has light shone.

—Isaiah 9:2

Let us remember that we have every reason to hope no matter our circumstances this season. May we reflect on God's promises and praise Him today and throughout the coming year.