january 2010 newsletter...
every new day...
New Year and new beginnings: I'm sure you've already heard your share of talks on how to get a fresh start this year and follow through on your resolutions, for once! Nevertheless, I am boldly tackling the topic one more time, even though it is now February.
I had the privilege of being back in Atlanta for the New Year, and sitting in on an intimate prayer time at St Paul's. As I listened to others share their resolutions for the New Year, I realized that I hadn't even paused to ask God about what this year should or could hold. What one man shared stuck with me. He talked about some of the difficulties his family was facing, and then he mentioned John the Baptist. He said he wanted to be like John the Baptist in one specific way: John the Baptist recognized Christ from a distance and said, "Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world." The only resolution this man had for the New Year was a desire to recognize the Lamb of God at work around him. I've been thinking about that all through January.
Two or three years after college, I had moved to Atlanta, entered graduate school, and then entered a kind of existential crisis. It began when I realized that I probably never would bring about the sort of world change I hoped and dreamed of accomplishing. I began to imagine myself playing out my whole life in a little suburban house, puttering back and forth to school each day. I imagined reaching the age of 90 and reckoning with the recognition that I had squandered my life on nothing. The problems of the world seemed too great, and my will too small, to make any difference at all.
I understood that knowing God is what brings life meaning. I did not yet understand that the whole point of the Christian life is precisely that, in ourselves, we cannot do anything to change the world. Apart from God, our efforts amount to a pile of dust, because they disappear when we do. If, on the other hand, we spend our lives looking for how and where God is working, and entering into that work of love and redemption, we become part of effecting eternal change. I don't intend at all to suggest that we spend our lives only speaking of heaven and forgetting the need around us. On the contrary, we bring glimpses of heaven and God to earth when we participate in breaking the chains of oppression, poverty, and hypocrisy around us.
In fact, this whole concept of "beholding the Lamb" becomes quite complex. Certainly, my resolution throughout life must be to look for God and to proclaim, "Behold the Lamb who takes away the sin of the world." The much more frightening thought, for me, though, is that if we are the body of Christ here on earth, then others ought to be able to look at us and say, "Behold the Lamb who takes away the sin of the world." If those who do not know God look around at all the suffering and injustice, and do not see any sign of redemption at work, that speaks direct condemnation on us, on the church as a whole.
The book of Revelation makes the stakes clear here. Listen to the message to the church in Sardis: "I know your works. You have the reputation of being alive, but you are dead. Wake up, and strengthen what remains and is about to die, for I have not found your works complete in the sight of my God. Remember then, what you received and heard. Keep it, and repent. If you will not wake up, I will come like a thief, and you will not know at what hour I will come against you."
So I resolve to wake up. What brought me out of that period of crisis in my early twenties was actually a song - one song - by a ska group called Five Iron Frenzy. "Every New Day" was the title, and the lyrics told the story of moving from disillusionment with the world to hope in Christ. The song closes with a prayer that became my plea:
Healing hands of God have mercy on our unclean souls once again.
Jesus Christ, light of the world, burning bright within our hearts forever.
Freedom means love without condition, without a beginning or an end.
Here's my heart, let it be forever Yours,
Only You can make every new day seem so new.
Every interaction of every day must be marked by freely loving those around us, without condition, without a beginning or an end. This is the way we have been loved, are loved. When the fire of Christ's love consumes us and through us, the world, every new day and year will continue to seem so new. May you be consumed.
Your fellow pilgrim,
Amy