When I woke up this morning at 5am,
I lay in the semi-dark listening to the cackle of the baby monitor beside me
and the hum of the industrial fan in the next room. Esther’s sore gums woke her
every hour in the night, so this sleep-deprived mama wished I could fall asleep
for another hour rather than brave the sub-zero morning for my usual date with the
gym treadmill. But after fifteen minutes of snuggling under new flannel sheets,
force of habit won the hour and I slipped out of bed and into the seventh day
of 2014.
As I drove to the gym in our 1996
Geo, vents breathing cold air on mittened fingers, I thought about Caleb, a
nineteen year old boy from our church, lying in a hospital in a month-old coma,
his new year dawning in a way he never imagined.
I pondered the words Caleb’s Dad,
Bruce, typed on an ipad in a hospital room as he sat beside his bed-ridden son
in the first week of the new year--“‘Delight yourself also in The Lord
and He shall give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way also to Him
and He will bring it to pass.’ The
starting place, my friend, is 'delighting in the Lord.’”
The starting place for
2014—delight in the Lord—no matter the circumstances.
As I pulled into the gym parking
lot and grabbed my backpack and water bottle, my thoughts wandered to the night
Jon and I sat at our kitchen table listening to our friend Kris tell the story
of his childhood, how he grew up in a church full of Bible but absent of Jesus,
how he wanted to meet Jesus, so he opened his Bible and read the gospels,
“looking for Jesus.” Stopping at the words “Jesus wept,” Kris said, “Now that, that, is Jesus, and I want to know this
Jesus.”
The
starting place for 2014—seeing the real Jesus—the one who weeps with the
hurting.
Front-desk-Pat asked for my gym
pass, bringing me back to the present. Pass scanned in, I trudged upstairs
hoping to find an open treadmill. As I pulled off my green jacket and clipped
the blue ipod on my tank top, the words of Ann Voskamp’s new year’s post echoed loud:
“The most
important skill 2014 needs is this: Just be with Jesus. Listen to Jesus. Rest in
Jesus. Wait for Jesus. Be Loved by Jesus. Wonder over Jesus. Live through
Jesus. When who Jesus is overwhelms you — nothing that happens can
overcome you. Steep your soul in Jesus and nothing is too
steep to overcome.” (http://www.aholyexperience.com/)
The
starting place for 2014—steep the soul in Jesus—for with Jesus, nothing is too
difficult to overcome.
As I scanned the sea of new-year’s resolutioner’s sweating on treadmills, ellipticals, and bikes, I saw 85-year-old Dick wave me over to his treadmill. As I climbed onto the treadmill Dick saved for me, I remembered the New Year’s of my childhood:
Each new year began with Dad handing out yet another Read-Through-The-Bible schedule. The only thing that changed from year to year was the method—chronologically from Genesis to Revelation? According to date written, which meant starting in Job? Or a mixture of Psalms/Proverbs as you plowed into the gospels at the same time? . . .
Over the years I read, memorized, and studied A LOT of Bible. I read and studied a lot of systematic theology (Grudem anyone?), dissected worldviews against the backdrop of the Bible, and listened to political debates dripping with Bible. But in the midst of all that Bible, I missed the most important thing:
I missed Jesus.
After I grew up and left home, God
sent me I-can’t-handle-this-on-my-own kinds of trials, and in the midst of
trial I learned I could read the Bible all day long and still not have Jesus.
I learned Jesus is not found in spiritual disciplines or
church service or righteous living.
I
learned when the MEANS become the END, we live moralistic lives filled with
BIBLE but empty of JESUS.
Which is why on the cusp of this
new year my hubby pulled out his Bible and read these words: “So then it (salvation) depends not on human will or
exertion, but on God, who has mercy.” (Romans 9:16).
No amount of human exertion gives
you Jesus.
Jesus is God’s merciful gift to us,
and the Bible, as our friend Kris said, is a MEANS to seeing Jesus.
So for our family, the starting place for 2014 is this—praying
for God’s mercy—because only through His mercy can we truly know Jesus,
live Jesus.
And our 2014 New Year’s Resolution is this: delight in
Jesus, see Jesus, live Jesus.
For if the desire of our heart is
Jesus, we can look at the uncertainty of a new year and say with Bruce, who sits in a hospital room with his beloved son:
The starting place, my
friend, is 'delighting in the Lord.’
In “pastures green”? Not always; sometimes He
Who knowest best, in kindness leadeth me
In weary ways where heavy shadows be.
So whether on hilltops high and fair
I dwell, or in the sunless valleys, where
The shadows lie, what matter?
He is there.
(Streams in the Desert,
17)
