New Year, New Mercies and Fresh Snow

Yesterday a new year dawned with a fresh blanket of white snow.  God’s mercies, like January, are brand new and yesterday grace fell like snow on this beach cottage of ours.

I put decorations back in their boxes and set a dry and fading tree by the street and prayed “yes, this is January and all things are new.”

I want to make this year matter.  I want to continue to find the {better!} life that God would have my family live and to love in the way that only He can do through us.  Don’t we all want those things?  To live a better life?  To be used and to matter?  Isn’t that the focus, once the confetti clears and we are left with our resolutions? Our desire for something better this time around?  But how do we get to the place of holy mattering?

Yesterday I looked out my window at the new snow falling on our old Christmas tree and I thought back two thousand years.  I thought back to a man in Rome, putting ink to parchment in candlelight.  Listen, this New Year, and hear how God is the author of renewal and mercy and new beginnings.   Listen how two thousand years ago, this man named Paul, wrote in the darkness this which today we can resolve in the light:

Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer yourselves as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. Romans 12:1 

My translation:  Take your eyes off yourself and just follow the Shepherd!  Forget about your wants and focus on what your children and your husband want.  Forget about your needs and focus on the needs of others.  When you serve anyone else, you serve Jesus himself.  Do this and you will be blessed. 

And so I commit Paul’s words to heart. I resolve in this new year to live my life,as never before, as a living sacrifice.

I RESOLVE TO BE HIS LIVING LOVE.

For every glance I take of myself, may I take ten of Jesus. 

And when I fail everyday, as I surely will, I resolve to get back up again and keep following my shepherd, offering myself as a living sacrifice.

For only in laying down our life will we find the one that is truly worth living. 

This is what matters.  This is the worship that is the meaning of life.

Join me in anticipating a truly beautiful, light-filled 2012 . . .

10 Comments

  1. Erin I love your posts a lot. I might decide to make that my resolution this year too! I’m wondering if you’ve found a church home in your new Michigan area? I know there are lots of options over there. My mom lives in Holland. What kind of church do you belong to?

  2. Yes!!! Tonight as I wiped little ones’ bottoms and hands and faces and noses and highchairs and my kitchen floors and counters, I thought: This is servanthood. This is me serving my family and my Jesus as much as I can on THIS DAY. And it felt good.

    Love this post.

    Xoxo,
    Ginny

  3. I enjoy your posts so much Erin. Looking through your eyes always makes the world a wonderfully magical, mystical yet practical loving place. Thank you!

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