A
year is full of promise. Everything is
new and fresh about the days coming because "anything can happen" in
them and yet we all know that we are full of calcified habits and mummified
behavior patterns that we rarely undo.
Extra weight almost always stays on us; trapped in a body of
routine. It is the crisis that awakens
us to change. The crisis comes like a
lightning bolt, the new day like a wave of the sea. Inexplicably we welcome the wave and despise
the bolt. The pink slip and the cancer
diagnosis we dread and yet they carry with them a hope we don't have in the new
day. Something must change when the
lightning strikes and it does. We see
people from a different angle, think of our habits with critical
awareness. The person we took for granted
morphs into a trusted friend; the walk in the park becomes alive with brilliant
colors we hadn't noticed. Not everything
turns grey when the lightning strikes, sometimes neon green and strawberry reds
explode out from the shadows. Satan
engineers a crisis when he is afraid we have begun to inch our way back to God
but he miscalculates. He thinks he
wrecks us with the stormy blast but in fact the drenching rain can awaken us to
what we have missed, what we might have if we just turn the boat around. The old term "backslidden"
describes the vast majority of us. We
have fallen back into our old crusty patterns of Godless doing. We have stopped looking to Him for guidance,
given up our electrifying dependence upon God for help and gotten by on
mindless habitual religion rather than living faith. Perhaps today you could cast your habits to
the wind and do something wildly new with God.
Scream into the stars your praise.
Throw all the money you have in your wallet into some stranger's hand
and invest in love rather than something more reasonable and rational. Lock yourself in your room and sit with God
until you are thoroughly uncomfortable and bored to tears. Confess your hidden sin and make right your
wrong. Take someone's hand and pray for
her. Finally forgive your father or your
coach that despised you. Read out loud
an entire chapter of the Bible and make each sentence pop with the joy of an
angelic choir. This is a fresh new day
God has given you! Make the most of it!
Yet
this I call to mind and therefore I have hope: Because of the Lord's great love
we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your
faithfulness. I say to myself, "The
Lord is my portion; therefore I will wait for him." Lamentations 3:21-24 NIV
I so much love you. Let's get rid of boring religion.
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