my New Year's prayer

Today is the first day of 2016. This year, no resolutions, no new goals (I have some unmet ones left over from last year). This year, a prayer.

Lord, help me to be what this messed-up world needs in order to see you.

Help me be the voice of kindness when the political rhetoric turns to name-calling and nasty accusations, when angry minorities confront complacent majorities, when my perception of your love is challenged to include people I don’t like.

Help me be the instrument of peace when the world sees Christians as the ones so eager to shoot back, and and even willing to shoot first if it means sniping an abortion doctor or wiping out a Planned Parenthood clinic. Help me to pray and love instead of fight.

Help me be the hands of compassion when the storms strike or layoffs hit or when backs are turned, so that unwed mom or gay couple or twice-divorced old bar-fly can feel just for a minute how your love has changed me.

Help me be the husband who nurtures his wife, the dad who serves his children, the son who doesn’t forget his mom and dad. Help me be the friend my friends need.

Help me to lose my self-centeredness so I can see your image-bearers the way you see them, and to lose my selfishness so that I’ll act on what I see.

Lord, in 2015 I did a lot of finger-pointing, I sneered at a lot of people, I called names and talked behind people's backs. I wasn’t a very good example of what your followers are supposed to be, and I’m afraid when the world looked at me I reinforced a lot of their bad stereotypes of what your church is.

Help me, this year, to want what you want, to love everyone as you love, and to heal and unite instead of wound and divide. Lord, this year may there be less of me and more of you.

Amen.

ready to serve

There’s something melancholy about New Year’s Eve.

Partly it’s the fact that Christmas is done, the family reunions and time off a thing of the past. Where I live, we’re looking at months of cold days and long nights, grinding through the winter. But also, there’s this feeling that another year of my life is gone, and sometimes it seems like I didn’t do much with it.

Tomorrow starts a new year. Instead of parties, I’ll be thinking of goals. There’s a lot on my plate for 2016.

So I look once more to the life of Jesus, to that time when the miracle baby of Mary and Joseph crossed paths with the miracle baby of Zechariah and Elizabeth.

“Then Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan to be baptized by John. But John tried to deter him, saying, ‘I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?’ Jesus replied, ‘Let it be so now; it is proper for us to do this to fulfill all righteousness.’ Then John consented.” Matt 3:13-15

There was a lot on Jesus’ plate too, but in this passage I see him getting ready. Oh, he didn’t need baptism the way I did, but just as he was brought to the temple as an infant, and returned as a young boy to meet the requirements of the law, he now turns to John to carry out the new forms of grace.

Jesus doesn’t say he’s above all that. Jesus carefully did what was expected of righteous men of that day, and modeled the relationship with God that baptism marks.

As I get ready for 2016, I pray that it will be a year of effective ministry, through this blog, through the opportunities to fill pulpits, through my work operating paint plants. And I look to Jesus, who carefully attended to his relationships with God and with people as the foundation of his ministry.