You're listening to the Allender Center podcast with Dr. Dan Allender.

This week, Dan and Becky Allender invite us to look back on the past year, to remember the highlights and low points, the delights and challenges, and to wonder what themes Jesus has been growing in us this year.

All of us at the Allender Center have been so grateful to

have you journey with us this year, and we cannot wait to see what God has in store for the year

ahead.

Well, I think we can almost see the end of the year from where we're sitting.

And as we look out at a very gray, rainy Washington end of the year, it is so very very important to take stock, to take in your year, and to allow it to

lead to a sense of gratitude and to reflection about what God was doing in this year with you,

as well as to prepare you to think through the implications of what the new year will bring.

So I have my beloved wife with me.

And so tell me about your year back.

Oh, it's been a good year.

I think as we reflect back, at least the first thing that comes to my mind is our newest grandchild and the privilege that I have to watch him on Tuesdays.

And it's such a marker of what a year holds.

And in the life of an infant, it is astonishing.

Oh, when you showed me the Facebook picture of him a year ago,

and then of him a year later recently, it is.

It's just, you know, there are milestones and markers

and Facebook, for whatever ambivalence I have about it.

That was a nice gift to be able to see those two pictures held together.

It's true.

And so my days with him are quite a bit different than they were a year ago.

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