Archive for year: 2021

“He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.” Colossians 1:17

I made my final trek this week to our outside storage building, carrying the last of Christmas 2020 decorations. I always enjoy Christmas and all the trappings of the season, yet there is something freeing as the house is finally returned to post-Christmas. All the furniture is moved back into place, floors swept and tables dusted. There is a freshness and cleanness about the house and a sense of restoring order out of a joyful chaos.

Celebrating a new year represents more than just a day on the calendar, it marks a new beginning. So how can one 24-hour period make such a difference? One day it is the old year, the next the beginning of something new. Yet in the turn of the calendar page, there is excitement, hope, freshness and a restored outlook.

“There, where clinging to things ends, is where God begins to be. If a cask is to contain wine, you must first pour out the water. The cask must be bare and empty. Therefore, if you wish to receive divine joy and God, first pour out your clinging to things. Everything that is to receive must and ought to be empty.”

These words were written centuries ago by German theologian Meister Eckhart. However, centuries before Eckhart, Jesus responded to the accusation that he wasn’t following the regulations of fasting by saying “no one sews a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment, for the patch will pull away from the garment, making the tear worse. Neither do people pour new wine into old wineskins. If they do, the skins will burst; the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined. No, they pour new wine into new wineskins, and both are preserved.” (Matthew 9: 6-17)

Jesus didn’t have a problem with fasting or keeping religious traditions. However, He did have a problem if the old kept someone in ritualistic bondage. Jesus had a problem If the old kept someone from truly enjoying their life with God.  Jesus knew the old wineskin couldn’t hold both old and new. “You must first pour out the water. The cask must be bare and empty.”

I wouldn’t put myself into the category of a hoarder but you can talk with my wife. I would simply call myself a serious collector of things. The problem with my collecting things is that I run out of storage room. I can’t find what I am looking for because it is part of this vast collection of things and gets lost in the midst of everything.

I could have kept the Christmas decorations in the house but the challenge would be that the old would have kept us from ever enjoying the excitement of change. The beautiful decorations that make Christmas special would look out of place at Easter, 4^th of July or Thanksgiving. The old gives way to allow the new to come into our home.

Holding onto the old keeps us from the blessings that God would like to give us. Billy Graham wrote about letting go in this story of a father and son:

“A little child playing one day with a very valuable vase put his hand into it and could not withdraw it. His father, too, tried his best, but all in vain. They were thinking of breaking the vase when the father said, “Now, my son, make one more try. Open your hand and hold your fingers out straight as you see me doing, and then pull.”

To their astonishment the little fellow said, “Oh no, father. I couldn’t put my fingers out like that, because if I did I would drop my penny.”

Could this be the year when you need to open your hand and let go of the worthless penny in your hand?

Could this be the year when you pour out the old to enjoy the new?

 

“As children bring their broken toys

With tears for us to mend

I brought my broken dreams to God

Because He is my friend.

But then, instead of leaving Him

In peace to work alone

I hung around and tried to help

With ways that were my own.

At last I snatched them back and cried,

How can you be so slow?

My child, He said, what could I do…

You never did let go.” (Broken Dream by Lauretta P. Burns)

 

God is great,

Pastor Lynn Burton