January 1-Happy New Year-In Isaiah 432:19 , God says that I am about to do a new thing, do you not perceive it? The new is a place of life, of surprise, of forward motion. What new thing would you like to see in your life? What new thing would you like to see in your congregation?
Monday-Perhaps some resolutions have already fallen by the wayside today. God knows full well that our spirits are willing but our flesh is weak. Consider making some smaller resolutions or breaking them into more manageable pieces. After all, John Calvin saw our spiritual progress as done in bits and pieces over the years.Please, please, consider a spiritual resolution along with the usual ones about weight, diet, and exercise.
Tuesday-I picked up Joan Didion’s new book, Blue Nights. She wrote a fine memoir of her reactions to her husband’s death in Year of Magical thinking. Some of that book had many concerns about their daughter’s health. In this book she faces the death of that daughter and the fight with the fragility of aging at 75. She has a good sense that grief does have some closure but still is a wound easily opened. “I know what fear is... the fear is not for what is lost...what is lost is already behind locked doors.the fear is what is still to be lost. You may see nothing still to be lost. Yet there is no day in my life when I do not see her.” (p. 188, final words)
Wednesday-I’m going to the reformed roundtable this week. i am charged with leading discussion on a new book Life in God by the new president of CTS, Matthew Boulton. I am struck by his noticing that Calvin saw our human nature as blind as much as “depraved.” Calvin saw a world as the theater of God’s glory, of shining with a thousand lights of God’s goodness. We seem oblivious to this, unable and unwilling to see Creation as a constant manifestation of God’s presence and goodness. Try to stop and smell the roses of God’s goodness today.
Thursday-I’m scheduled to meet with our youngest daughter today, before she goes back to school this weekend. I look forward to it. It is good to share a meal and some time with our loved ones. It has the feel of secular Communion for me, as we open up our calendars and ourselves to be present with and for each other. Whom would you like to have dinner with? What person from history would you like to have supper with?
Friday-Epiphany’s readings for today are precisely the ones that added to the story of the Magi, s. 60:1-6, Ps. 72. Eph. 3:1-12 is the other reading. v.10 caught my eye...”so that through the church the wisdom of God in its rich variety might now be made known.” I love the idea that the universal, catholic church exists to demonstrate variety, diversity of God’s wisdom in the world. One size does not fit all in the expanse of God’s message to us.
Saturday-I don;t know if I am accurate, but January always seems the coldest month to me. When I was a teacher i walked to work in Rock Island, and one January I don;t think it was much above 10 degrees on the way to work. Calvin was an intellectual, but his symbol was a heart aflame for God. He saw our spiritual lives as a piece, body, mind, soul together. He saw us as naturally frigid in our religious affections, unless warmed by the spirit.Where would your life be aided by the warm breeze of the spirit?
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