Our Commitment to the Mission

Week of January 1, 2012 – New Year Renewed Commitment

Theme/Title:  Our Commitment to the Mission

Scripture:   Genesis 22: 15-18; 2 Kings 23: 1-3; Jeremiah 31: 31-34; Matthew 25: 31-40

 Media:        YouTube video “Bono Prayer Speech” by Jborn4christ

Reflections:

Happy New Year!  Once again we begin a new year, a new opportunity to do things differently and to be different.  We make resolutions and seriously expect that we will work at keeping them.  All is positive expectations about what is to come.  We do have our nagging thoughts about all that bothered us in the old year.  We know that most of what was will continue to be.  And we aren’t naive enough to believe that all changes just because it is 2012.  We also take it with a grain of salt what the doomsayers and predictors of the coming end are saying.  But still it is a new year and an opportunity to try and get it right.

One thing we in the church have is a way to move beyond the past and into a future that is better, we have confession and forgiveness; we have grace.  As those who know God and God’s grace we know that tomorrow can be better than today and that today can be better than yesterday.  And because of this knowledge and belief we make a promise to God and the universe.  We enter into a covenant, a pledge, a promise that this day and this year will be better for all God’s children and all God’s creation, that we will do what we can to make this so and that we will move beyond our own selfish wants and needs toward meeting the wants and needs of God’s children throughout the world.

We say, like St Francis and John Wesley and so many others, “Not my will but thine be done.”  We ask God to help us be whatever it is God needs us to be and then to help us move beyond ourselves so that we can be what it is God needs us to be; what the world needs us to be.  We covenant and our strong conviction is that we will fulfill that covenant knowing that God always fulfills God’s part – to grant us grace, to accept and love us and to be with us no matter what we face.

May we all say with honest conviction and wholehearted enthusiasm “O glorious and blessed God…thou art mine, and I am thine.  So be it.  And the covenant which I make on earth, let it be ratified in heaven.”

Meditation:       

Standing before God, perhaps at night under the stars, reflect on the year past.  Remember all the times you knew God’s grace.  Call to mind the times when you helped to make the world a better place.  Celebrate those times.  Dredge up those times when you gave in to your own wants and needs, when you didn’t care about the world and making it better.  Bear in mind that God has already forgiven you, now forgive yourself.

Prayer:

Thank God for the year past.  Praise God for the moments of grace you experienced.  Thank God for the good you did and the blessings you gave others.  Claim the forgiveness God has already granted you for those failures and missteps of the year past.  Ask God to give you strength and focus in the year ahead so that you can honestly fulfill your covenant to follow and do God’s will.