Are you ready for another new year?

As I spent some time reflecting on the passing year yesterday, I was feeling a bit like it might go out with more of the proverbial whimper rather than a bang. Thinking back to this time last year when so many were hopeful that 2021 would be “better” than 2020, it could be easy to feel as though we are barely crawling over this “finishing line” and really don’t have much energy left to hope for anything. So much of the latter part of this year, for us, has felt like treading water after a shipwreck, barely managing to keep our heads above water. And if we weren’t in that place ourselves, we were trying help others from going under. And yet…

One of the activities I like to do at the end of a year is look back to the beginning – it’s hopes, what I have felt God saying, goals I might have set - to see how these played out through the year. This has been particularly helpful this year as so much of the last month or so has felt “lost”. Even as I acknowledged my sense that I “should” have done more, and the list of what I still haven’t done started to flit through my mind, so much of the good of this year, the positive and productive activities and circumstances, the way God opened doors and shifted so much in our lives (even in ways that didn’t feel so much like Him!) started to flood my thoughts.

No, in the middle of the continuing global upheaval of this year, in the middle of the loss, pain, rejection, fear, anxiety and panic that has roared around like a hurricane, I can come to the end standing upright and say, “It was a good year”. Yes, it is far too easy to look at all the issues and negativity, the darkness, but God is still here, still sovereign and still bringing His plans and purposes to fruition. Anytime I like, I can head to that place of stillness in Him, with Him, in the middle of the storm. I can choose to focus instead on gratitude for what is, or what has been good, rather than living in hopelessness and despair.

Heading my mind toward that place of stillness yesterday morning, the first lines of “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel” started playing in my mind. Looking up all the words, I can’t help but see it as a wonderful prayer for this time (check out the whole song here). The first and last verses are:

“O come, O come, Emmanuel, And ransom captive Israel That mourns in lonely exile here Until the Son of God appear.

Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel Shall come to thee, O Israel.

O come, Desire of nations, bind In one the hearts of all mankind; Bid all our sad divisions cease, And be Thyself our King of Peace.”

The last verse particularly resonates with me. Oh, that our divisions would cease! And what a prayer that has been through the ages. How that might happen is for next week’s blog, though…

Returning to the beginning of the year, there were a few entries from my journal that hit me again. I had been reading through Isaiah, particularly chapter 40 and 41. These chapters are filled with the promise that God does and will show up. That He will make a way where there seems no way, that every obstacle will be removed out of His path, and much about people seeing His glory in plain sight; that it is time to proclaim Him loudly and proudly; that He will be known by all, throughout the earth. The beautiful picture of dry, barren wastelands and deserts turning into springs, into places of lush growth is a central part of the promise here.

Into these reflections, the word God gave me for 2021 was “peace”. As I have shared earlier, it was not a word I immediately embraced. Peace, like patience (and probably every other fruit of the Spirit), generally requires a good dose of the opposite to experience its manifestation. However, into my little rejection of this word, Yeshua whispered, “Shalom” to me. Going on a search through the deeper connotations of this word we so loosely translate “peace”, excited me no end!

Wholeness, healing, restoration, restitution, integrity, harmony, prosperity, welfare, “righteous recompense”, unbrokenness, fullness, “the days of mourning are completed”.

In fact, going back to Is 40:1 (TPT), it begins,

“Comfort, comfort my people with gentle, compassionate words. Speak tenderly from the heart to revive those in Jerusalem, and proclaim that their warfare is over. Her debt of sin is paid for, and she will not be treated as guilty. Prophesy to her that she has received from the hand of Yahweh twice as many blessings as all her sins.”

This sounds very much like “shalom” to me!

So, 2021 started with much hope and excitement for me about what God was going to do. I must confess, that not much of it has been in the format I perhaps expected or would have liked. In fact, I am still processing how some things could be part of His will, especially as they have seemed to have dashed some of my hopes to pieces. However, I will keep seeking Him for the next step and the next step, with the hope, and even confidence, that His plans are better, even when I can’t really see His hand in it.

I refuse to allow disappointment and unmet expectations lead me into a place of bitterness or retreat.

For each of us, in fact, the only way we can step into this new year with hope rather than despair, with joy rather than bitterness is through gratitude. Our gratitude may just be for the opportunities to draw closer to God, to depend on Him in greater measure, to learn more of Who He is for us; it may be finding thankfulness in the little things, like provision or simply for a beautiful day.

If we want to be well positioned for all that 2022 will bring, an attitude of gratitude is a giant step in a life-giving direction, leading us toward freedom, joy and shalom and most importantly, strengthening our connection with Father God, Yeshua, His Son and Holy Spirit.

“Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel.”

2020: It’s time to LEAP into ABUNDANCE

At the beginning of a new year, loss is not what we really want to focus on. However, loss is such a reality for many of us. Here in Australia, where much of our country is suffering crippling drought compounded by devastating bush fires, many are painfully aware of the experience of loss. Of course, we only have to flick on the news to realise that war, economic hardships, unrest, to name only some of the issues, leave few in our world untouched by encounters with loss.

When we live with enough profound and deep loss, though, it can threaten to become our identity. Like Naomi in the book of Ruth (my Bible just flipped open at this passage this morning!), we can decide to allow it to change how we see ourselves, our life and our future. We can believe that our life will never again be “pleasant” (the meaning of Naomi) and that we are destined to experience only “bitterness”. Just as Naomi asked to be called Marah, (which means bitter), we see this to be our lot for life.

In life, most people suffer terrible loss at some point. If you have, you understand the crippling, soul destroying vacuum that threatens to overwhelm all desire for living further – the inability to even hope that you might feel joy, or even peace, again. Loss and all its associated grief and pain can become a black hole in our being which seems as though it will swallow up all goodness and hope that may ever come our way for all our future. Indeed, it appears that it may well even have stolen our future, to the point we can see nothing ahead for us but continuing pain and bitterness.

In the past, as we have stepped into the new year, I have asked God for a word for the year ahead. Reflecting back, I can see they have been very accurate, although not necessarily in ways I expected or hoped.

At the beginning of 2017, the word was “resilience”. I remember well my disappointment with that one! Just as with learning patience, I knew resilience can only develop by going through tough times. As I look back through my blogs and journaling, I know that year did not produce many of the answers, breakthroughs and promises I was hoping to see. But woven through, I see the unwavering hand and love of my Father, drawing me deeper into Him, teaching me to focus more and more on Him and not my circumstances, building my faith and my ability to hold on to Him even when I don’t see the answers I want come to fruition. In the face of unrelenting disappointments and a lack of restitution of those losses we have felt God’s promise to restore, we have been learning the resilience to simply continue to stand when that is all we can do.

In 2018, to my excitement, “anticipation” popped into my consciousness. The desires of my heart that I was anticipating did not materialise, though. However, shifts have come in situations, relationships and the “bigger picture” I believe that God is more interested in. These have well answered (and continue to answer) the excitement of my anticipation.

This morning I was reminded to ask God if He had a word for me this year. As I put my knife into my nearly empty marmalade jar to scrape some out for my toast,

I felt Him whisper the word “abundance”.

Don’t you love His sense of irony!

Now, although I really like that word, there is a hesitation in my soul to be leaping in joy. So many hopes and promises we have been waiting on for years have not yet materialised. It does not quite feel safe to believe that I am hearing right.

Am I really hearing that? Or am I just making it up in my head because it is what I want?

I don’t want to set myself up for disappointment. After many years of feeling though we have been just getting by, continuously scraping the bottom of the barrel of our reserves (of energy, hope, finances, faith to name a few), the idea of abundance is even a little scary - it means letting go of mindsets that have become “normal”.

However, as I have been learning, it is so important that I don’t overlay this word with all I think it should mean.

I need to wait on Him to show me what abundance looks like in His realm; wait on Him for the abundance He wants to give me.

Which returns me to loss: surely the opposite of abundance.

What do we do with loss and how do we experience abundance when our losses seem irreplaceable?

First, for me, is the ever-deepening revelation of what God’s abundance is about.

On the surface, we can make abundance about material “stuff”: Prosperity in our goods and provisions and good times. At a slightly deeper level, we might make it about our relationships with family and friends, or even about opportunity to serve God.

However, I can’t help but reflect on this abundance through the lens of Matt 6:19-21

“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

Much of what we consider to be abundance and provision from the Lord (which it is good to be grateful for), can become our mainstay: when we put our trust and value into these things, they become props to our sense of well being and safety.

It is only when we suffer the loss of them that we realise what poor gods they make.

So then, what sort of abundance from the Lord can we and should we rely on? What does He really promise?

Galatians 5:22-3 springs to mind:

“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.”

(If you read this in context of the rest of the passage, the message becomes even more plain. However, this is a blog, not a sermon!)

The obvious problem with stuff and even relationships is that we can suffer from the loss of them. There are times where we have no ability to control that loss. In our relationship with God, though, His word promises us that nothing can separate us from His love (Rom 8:39). By extension, that means no matter what loss we experience in the physical realm, we still have access to those fruit of the Spirit, in abundance.

I know that these sorts of words can seem exceptionally trite and even unfeeling in the face of loss. However, this is something I have personally and painfully experienced. There have been a number of losses for me over the years that have felt like they have broken my heart and destroyed my life and future. And I know am far from perfecting living out of these words to the contrary.

More lately, though, I have started to get a picture of what it is like as we set our faces like flint toward God. When we feel like the situation in Isaiah 50, where it seems as though everything and everyone is against us, as though the pain, loss and destruction will never end, we keep our eyes fixed on Jesus, the Author and Perfecter of our faith, (Heb 12:2). As we do this, in the picture I am seeing, the troubles and issues of this life become smaller and smaller and impact us less and less. Instead of our love, joy, peace, and hope coming from those things God provides us with, they come from Him directly. Nothing can separate us or sever that relationship unless we allow it (Rom 8:39).

A couple of years back, I was reading Psalm 23 in the Complete Jewish Bible. I didn’t get past the words “I lack nothing”. (Check out my blog on this here.) The landing point was that if I really believe this - that with God as my Shepherd I have no lack - I have to surrender the lack or loss I am experiencing to the Lord as well as all else.

Turning our faces toward 2020, we will only be able to receive and have space available for filling with all the abundance He promises as far as we commit to handing Him all those places of loss in our lives and our being that threaten to suck us dry and rob us of every good our Father has for us. (If you are not sure how to do this, it can be as simple as speaking it out loud, “Father God, I hand You all those places in me that have experienced loss. Please fill me afresh with Your abundance.”)

In the past weeks, I have been sitting with something I was sensing God was saying to me through my gazanias. (For those who don’t know, these are a flowering plant, as pictured here.)

The last six months or so, have found me energised to do much more work in my garden than in the past. There are places which have needed a complete start over and God has really been talking to me on a number of fronts through this (which may be another blog!).

As I have renovated my garden, though, it has included shifting some plants to fill spaces in different areas. My gazanias were one of those shifts.

These plants had been sitting in my garden doing very little for a number of years, despite the fact that they are known to be very resilient and prolific, both in growth and flowering. When I moved them, it was only a matter of a couple of metres distance, and I divided each plant in two.

Well! As we have SHIFTED into Summer, these plants have SHIFTED into overdrive. They have at least quadrupled in size and where in the past they may have produced maybe one or two flowers each year, this year they have been literally covered in flowers already, with more coming up behind. An overwhelming abundance!

What is different?

I can look at an obvious answer, that they are now getting that bit more sun compared to where they were. They are also not crowded out by weeds and other plants any more. Perhaps I have watered them more. However, the SHIFT was perhaps most important to them.

Like these plants, (who didn’t get a choice, but I believe they are happy with the choice I made!), sometimes

we have to allow God to SHIFT us if we want things to be different.

Saying we want to stay where we are and Him to move the sun and everything around us to give us “better growing conditions”, is probably not going to cut it with Him. In fact, when we start to dictate the conditions we want, we start to set ourselves up as god.

To allow the SHIFT to happen, though, we not only need to be prepared to let go of what we have and where we are, but also what we don’t have (our lack) and the pain and grief (and loss) of the past.

If you haven’t realised yet, 2020 is a LEAP year. As I have reflected on what this might look like, I keep getting a picture of a mountain goat LEAPING up onto and over boulder after boulder, higher and higher up a mountain, with great speed and agility. If you have ever seen how goats can jump, you will know that they can LEAP on and over obstacles that seem insurmountable. (Check them out on YouTube if you don’t know what I mean.)

I sense that this year, as we connect in with what God is doing

there is opportunity for us to LEAP up the mountain of obstacles that have held us back in the past, HIGHER and HIGHER in faith,

until the pain, grief and losses of the past are but distant memory. And here, we can experience the true abundance of His fruit, His love, peace and joy. However, we will not be able to do this holding onto our past losses, pain, grief, guilt, sadness and disappointments, to mention a few.

My encouragement:

Bring Him your empty marmalade jar, the yawning chasm of your losses and emptiness. As you lay them at the foot of the cross, consecrating and leaving them with Jesus, you create a different kind of space that He is more than willing and able to fill with His very great abundance.

“For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name. I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.” Eph 3:14-21

A Thousand Little Griefs

Until recently, we had two cats.

Both were in their late teens.

One was always a wanderer. However, having not seen her for a few months now, we are pretty sure this time its for good.

The other was a homebody, and we watched her become more and more frail in the last weeks. Sometimes we had to check twice to see if she was still breathing. Her bodily functions were becoming unreliable and to pick her up felt like she would break. And then one day she went out and didn't come back.

It took me a couple weeks to be ready to clean up their food bowls. Well, I have moved them to the laundry, anyway.

Last week, I had a further loss. We finally made the hard decision to end our English classes for refugees and asylum seekers. I had been involved there for the past two years, but due to dwindling numbers of students and teachers, it was time to bite the bullet.

Travelling home, as I reflected on my feelings about this change, I realised that there had actually been many little griefs along that journey.

Working with people who are somewhat itinerant, we would sometimes have them in class for months and then they would simply not turn up. Sometimes they would come back for a while, and then other times, nothing. Sometimes other students would say, oh, yes, they have gone to Adelaide, or Sydney and so on. Other times we just didn't know. They may even have been sent back to their country of origin to face further persecution, or even death.

When previous students did drop by, our joy was great. As much as we hoped to have added into their lives, they certainly enriched our lives, with their care and acceptance of us, despite their own pains. For people who had been through so much, they always asked after us and our families, even though they were often separated from their own. They are mostly generous, caring people, the sort you would love to share your life with.

Reflecting on these little changes, I wonder how we should deal with the small griefs that drop in from time to time.

There was a point where the cat was really struggling with her continence, and as I perceived her imminent demise, I was really upset. However, since both have disappeared, I have not felt that same level of grief or loss. There is perhaps a belief that they might still come back, a denial that they are gone. So it is easier not to think about it, to just keep going.

How many of these little griefs do we all experience day in day out? Our ability to minimise and deny them means that we can continue to function. However,

is there a point we hit a critical mass, where all those little griefs add up to equal one big one that comes back to bite us?

There is a level at which the pressing needs of day to day living do not allow time to grieve these losses. And part of me is still far too rational - what is the point? Will crying and being upset change the outcome? So I move on, carrying a little more baggage than I probably need to, hoping the weight won't overwhelm me.

Yet.