Welcome to 2021!
Proverbs 3:5 (CEB) reads:
Trust in the Lord with all your heart; don’t rely on your own intelligence.
A number of years ago, I found myself standing before God, looking back on a hard year and hoping for a better one. There was grief and disappointment that year, lost loved ones, and the loss of what I thought the future would look like for my family and me. I did not come before God broken that New Year’s Day; I came with a sense of determination. I promised God that I would live the life I had been given with hope in spite of loss, with a sense of the value of each day as the only one promised.
You may hear that and feel like it’s contrived or what a pastor should say. Friends, it was as real as I can describe it. I chose life. That didn’t mean that I put down all the loss and walked away. I still miss three of the most important people in my life and wonder what life would have been like with them. It simply meant that I made a decision, not a new year’s resolution, a decision that I could keep and honor. Whatever life looked like, I chose to be fully alive.
2020 challenged our resolve, our energy, our courage, our hope, our very lives, and the lives around us. Many of us feel as though we’ve been kicked in the behind by 2020. That is not something I say lightly - it’s true. And still - here we are, me writing, you reading.
I choose life, again. I choose to seek God’s purpose and plan for my life, personally. I choose to help guide the congregation (in-person and virtual) into seeking God’s purpose and plan for our lives together, our lives outside our walls, our homes, the worlds in which we live.
How? I remember again and again that I choose to love God, and I choose again. I choose to follow a call to live that faith, even when I miss a step and fall flat on my face. How? I believe - and I know where my help comes from, I remember, let’s remember Psalm 121:1-6 together:
I lift up my eyes to the hills- from where does my help come?
My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth.
He will not let your foot be moved; he who keeps you will not slumber.
He who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep.
The Lord is your keeper; the Lord is your shade at your right hand.
The sun shall not strike you by day, nor the moon by night.
God brought us this far - and God will keep leading us - sometimes all we can do is the next right thing. I choose to do that next right thing with you, brothers and sisters in Christ. We made it to 2021... let’s keep on living.
Pastor Cathy
