A New Year

A bit belated and most definitely counter-intuitive New Year's toast:

"May all your expectations be frustrated, may all your plans be thwarted, may all your desires be withered into nothingness, that you may experience the powerlessness and poverty of a child, and sing and dance in the love of God who is Father, Son, and Spirit." -Larry Hein

I was reminded of a recent series our small group studied called Ordinary Radicals put out by the Meeting House Church in Canada (http://www.themeetinghouse.com/teaching/archives/2012/ordinary-radicals/). Pastor Tim's exegesis of the Matthew 5 Beatitudes is powerful teaching: in short, to live an abundant life as Christ followers we must turn over our rights to 1) Possessions 2) Pleasure and 3) Power. Common sense tells us we are vulnerable and helpless and even purposeless without control of important "stuff" in our lives like material goods, financial obligations, entertainment/pleasure, etc. But despite our human misgivings regarding surrender, Christ tells us that his power is made perfect in our weakness (2 Cor. 12:9-10).

So this New Year, I pray that you and I can experience the powerlessness of self and in surrender, the power of Christ to transform our hearts as we learn to sing and dance in the love of our Savior!