Only God can truly make all things new. We can make plans, have wishes, hopes, and dreams. We may even be a gifted strategic leader. However, it is God who makes all things new. God knows the depths of our hearts and our habitual responses to circumstances. God even the best way forward through this global pandemic. Where does that leave us? Are we just puppets on the end of God’s desires? No, most certainly not. We are gifted with the ability to become co-creators as God desires.
Many, many years ago in Junior High School, I was required to take a Home Economics class. The cooking was fun. BUT the sewing, well not so much. I invested well in a seam ripper! Almost every time it appeared like I was moving forward in making something from a length of material, I found myself ripping out the newly sewn seams. I wonder, like the act of ripping out mis sewn seams could we become even more pliable and available to God’s new thing if we relinquished some habitual ways of resistance or response?
The Scripture
At the beginning of this New Year, we pray with the Scripture from Revelation 21:1-6. Emphatically, we hear God state to the scribe:
See, I am making all things new.” Also he said, “Write this, for these words are trustworthy and true.” Then he said to me, “It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give water as a gift from the spring of the water of life. (Verses5-6)
It is done! God’s promises are secure. God has created a way where no way had previously been. God breathes new perspective, new life, new energy, new hope, into that which looks and feels most dire. The Scripture continues, as verses 7-8 encourages us to be overcomers of the most difficult.
Those who conquer will inherit these things, and I will be their God and they will be my children. But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the polluted, the murderers, the fornicators, the sorcerers, the idolaters, and all liars, their place will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death.” (Verses 7-8)
Today’s Prayer Practice
We hear the words from Matthew when Jesus said, “For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” The most dire of ill health, loneliness, anxiety, fear, or anguish do not feel like a light burden. Today we begin lightening the load as we seek God to make all things new.
Revelation 21:4 insists that the old will be made new as God has promised. “God will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away.”
Prayer Process
I invite you to gather a pen and paper. You may even desire colored pencil for this prayer practice. Please download the color sheet of a cross draped with cloth here. You will notice the same cloth is draped from left to right. It is a seamless cloth, just as God is seamless in love with us.
For your Examen prayer consider how you are entering this New Year. What attitudes, perspectives, circumstances weigh upon you? Is anxiety a natural response for you? Does fear rise? What about defeat, isolation, loneliness, or depression? What resistance rises when change may be eminant?
On one side of the draped cloth write the dire attitudes, perspectives, circumstances which may plague you in living new beginnings. It may take time to truly notice where and how resistance rises within you for the unfolding of God’s new thing. On the other side of the cross write how you image God may transform the dire into new possibility.
God yearns to love us. God desires to companion us as we shift from places of sacristy to lavish abundance of God’s grace. Enjoy praying as God’s plans for new life unfold this year.
Brenda
