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January 2012

December 2011

remember...

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We never know how things will turn out.

If you are looking ahead to 2012 and worrying or wondering about the future, you are wasting your time.  You would do well to stop ruminating over the unknown and start remembering the work of God in your life over this past year.

God is constantly imploring his followers to remember...

"Remember that you were slaves in Egypt and that the LORD your God brought you out of there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm." Deuteronomy 5:15

"Remember how the LORD your God led you all the way in the desert these forty years,..."  Deuteronomy 8:2

“Remember the law of my servant Moses, the decrees and laws I gave him at Horeb for all Israel." Malachi 4:4

[Jesus says] "Do you still not understand? Don’t you remember the five loaves for the five thousand, and how many basketfuls you gathered?" Matthew 16:9

"Remember Jesus Christ, raised from the dead, descended from David. This is my gospel,..." 2 Timothy 2:8

"And he [Jesus] took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to them, saying, “This is my body given for you; do this in remembrance of me.” Luke 22:19

Sitting here at my cluttered desk on New Year's Eve 2011 I am remembering...

...that my sister has a new kidney.

...that God has done the impossible at our school (TCIS).

...that I have lived another year with my precious wife and two wonderful daughters.

...that I have enjoyed a year of good health.

...that I have friends and family who are growing in their walk with the Lord.

I can't do justice to these rememberings.  In print they look so clean, simple and easy, but you know as well as I do that life is messy.  With the good comes the bad and amazingly, in God's economy, out of the bad God brings good.  This is where remembering really makes a difference.

We never know how things will turn out, but that is ok.  We don't need to know the future. We just need to remember how God has worked over the days and months of 2011.  We need to allow his faithfulness in the past to speak words of hope into our future.

Remember...God loves you.

Happy New Year

 


new day resolution

DSCF2319"Who we choose to become and how we choose to live every day creates a trajectory for everything else."  --Jerry Sittser

The New Year, with all of its opportunities, questions, joys and challenges, is right around the corner.  These waning days of 2011 are rife with plans, resolutions and prayerful pleas for a glimpse of God's will.  In charting a course for a desired target on December 31, 2012 we would do well to remember that the path (trajectory) is made up of 366  (Leap Year) points along the way.  Each point is a day and each point along the way is important.  (My mathematical friends tell me that each point along a trajectory is critical to arrival at the desired target or destination.)

I am convinced that each day of my life is important to God. 

So... no New Year's Resolutions for me this year.  I am going with a "New Day's Resolution."  Each and every day of 2012 starts here...

But seek first his Kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. 

Matthew 6:33 (NIV)


lasting influence

DSCF3065Are you teaching a classroom of students?  Leading a family?  Running a business.  Coaching a team?  Pastoring a church?  Living life...?

 


"It is not what a man does that is of final importance, but what he is in what he does. The atmosphere produced by a man, much more than his activities, has the lasting influence."  Baffled to Fight Better, Oswald Chambers


The Wild Hope

DSCF2654“The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Emmanuel”—which means, “God with us.”    Matthew 1:23

"To look at the last great self-portraits of Rembrandt or to read Pascal or hear Bach's B-minor Mass is to know beyond the need for further evidence that if God is anywhere, he is with them, as he is also with the man behind the meat counter, the woman who scrubs floors at Roosevelt memorial, the high-school math teacher who explains fractions to the bewildered child.  And the step from "God with them" to Emmanuel, "God with us," may not be as great as it seems.  What keeps the wild hope of Christmas alive year after year in a world notorious for dashing all hopes is the haunting dream that the child who was born that day may yet be born again even in us . . ."

                                                                 --Frederick Buechner