It’s January 2021, and all the holiday music has been played, the ribbons discarded, and new possessions squirrelled away into their proper places, signaling that lights and decorations must be returned to their hiding spots until the holiday madness begins to rev its engines once again.

I don’t hate January, particularly because at our house we celebrate two kids’ birthdays, born three years and one day apart. But more than that, January is always a time of reflection for me, the moment I review the previous year and decide what was a good effort, and what I need to do differently in the coming months. Naturally this gives rise to the dreaded New Year’s Resolutions, a series of the usual suspects which seldom change my life because most of the time they’re lightly made and just as lightly kept. But one part of my yearly reflection ritual does truly make an impact, because if I reflect honestly, with my whole truth, I am forced to confront my blessings as well as my troubles, and that is a wonderful thing.

I’m not going to stand here with a phony grin pretending 2020 was a bowl of roses, because it wasn’t. Covid has rampaged through the entire world, ravaging families, economies, and civil societies until we all question what normal could possibly look like. From every corner we’re sprayed with a steady stream of bad news as uncertainty, hunger, and loss seep down the walls of so many homes.

I was at work the day I got the news that my 77-year-old father and sweet stepmother had contracted covid, and I remember hiding behind my computer and crying out of sheer unadulterated fear. Fortunately, their doctors acted immediately, getting them the lifesaving antibody serum they needed to tamp down the virus before it could take full control. For months I’d been praying fervently they would be spared the virus, but our misfortune was not averted. Instead it was laid gently on the scales and balanced with such a slough of blessings that the whole contraption managed to lean in our favor, allowing them a lowered likelihood of re-contracting the virus that will last until they can get the vaccine. That’s what God’s finger looks like, and it’s an image to hold onto.