A New Beginning

God is a god of new beginnings, of another chance, of love and grace. For all those things I am grateful. I realized yesterday, as I met with a hurting relative, that He reaches down continually to share those things with us, yet at times, we get lost in our problems and fail to look up. I also realized that some of us have been beaten down so much, sometimes in the name of "God" or the Bible, or church, or religion, that we cannot grasp the concept of Him even wanting to love us, much less help us.

We have lost the idea of a personal and caring God. Americans are supposed to be self-sufficient, self=motivating, and independent. But has this caused us to feel that we do not need God? And from there, our meager attempts to control and rule our lives produce depression and anxiety when we cannot rise above circumstances brought on by outside forces such as other people and systems. We feel like failures when our own bodies let us down, unable to allow us to burn the candle at both ends any longer as the saying goes.

Then, our human reaction is to rebel. We try harder to control. We try to figure out a future that sounds good to us. We try to move people out of the way of what we see as desirous. And we have more depression and pain, and failure. Some people get angry at God for this failure. We tried to do life on our own, and how dare He not intervene? Or how dare He intervene? How dare He allow these uncontrollable things to enter our lives! He must not care about us!

And if the light of His love begins to flicker within us, yet we cannot see how things will work out as we planned, perhaps it is because we are not worthy of His love. Why would He be interested in a person who has tried to do life their own way and messed it up? And so, we dig our pit of depression even deeper.

The truth is God IS love. He loves us unconditionally. No exceptions! He does not analyze our mistakes and withold some of His love from those of us who messed up royally and repeatedly. He hurts when we hurt. It saddens Him when we choose to make decisions that hurt us. But He is always there, waiting for us to look up. It is hard to look up when we are downcast or down-trodden. It is hard to look up when we are ashamed.

I pray this year, that I can get a better understanding of His love. But also, that with this understanding, I can move in that love and wisdom, to share it with others and help someone look up to those reaching arms of love waiting to embrace them. I wish for this new year, that I can realize who I am in Christ and help others find His love. My relative is hurting. I hurt for her. But I pray that she will look up, not to her own abilities (which are many) but to an all-forgiving, all-loving, all-knowing Savior and find His peace and love which is far greater than any we can know from our human perspective alone.

Lord, let 2010 be the year that I am free from fear, intimidation, anger, and hurt to the level that I can share Your love and joy to others who are hurting. Thank you for all that you have given me. Thank you for Your unconditional love and mercy. And thank You that You love me just the way I am and even rejoice over me with pleasure. And You do that for each of us. What a loving God!