One Word

Such a busy season, with friends and family, love and laughter, and maybe quiet grumbles as the routine goes out the window, you can’t find the radiator key and then the boiler packs up…!

Trying to snatch a few moments at the close of the old year, on the cusp of the new, and my bible app encourages taking the time to ask God for a word of encouragement for this new year.

What!? A word from Him for the whole year… agh!

It is not that I doubt that He is able to do that. It is just that I sincerely doubt my ability to actually hear Him in these few snatched moments - which says far more about me than about Him and His power and glory and the reverence that is properly His due.

So, I sit there thinking, ‘Oh well, that would have been nice’ when a half remembered phrase drops into my mind – ‘My peace’. And I sit, in that intimate moment, when the creator God communes with me. And the word that stays and brings such rest is ‘My.’

The wonder of the idea that this peace is His. It is personal. It is something that belongs to Him. He owns it and yet He has come, Emmanuel, God with us, to bring us this something that we just don’t have but really need.

All the fruits of His Spirit, are gifts to us, parts of His presence that reveal His character and help us to see if we are becoming anything like Him, however slowly. And He gives them to us.
The possessive ‘my’ reveals that this is not about the abundance of these gifts at all (although there is indeed an abundance). This is about Him and Him alone. It is not that He gives peace, it is that He gives peace.

So in 2020 I want to focus on drawing closer to the One who gives me all that I need to live. To enjoy Him today and not just forever. Forever can seem a lifetime away, something I can get around to at some point, but today is here and now.

Enjoy.