Today
I pray for you a wonderful new beginning.
A new cause to believe in
A new hope to grasp onto and
A new love in your heart.
None of us knows what this new year will bring
but what we do know is the strength we have inside of each us to make it through whatever it may be.
Today I hope for you peace contentment and inner joy.
God bless you as you go into a new year of discovery.
We welcome the year of 2012.
The ending of an old year means
many changes are ahead for all of us
when the calendar flips over to January
we look at empty squares with nothing written on them and
we realize we have an opportunity to make new choices.
Tomorrow could be a new beginning.
We can learn to make choices that matter for eternity.
We can choose to move healthy relationships into deeper ones and
we can choose to leave behind those who are not good for us.
What matters the most
can become the new message we give to ourselves
in this new year.
I believe God gives each of us an opportunity to pause and
breathe deep and do some internal thinking.
Our Pastor once said, “When you pause you don’t miss the obvious.”
Tomorrow begins a new year.
Tomorrow we can choose to not want to miss the obvious.
Two thousand and eleven will be gone forever never to be seen again.
The choices we make for this new year can be good and positive ones.
We can learn to become grateful for all things.
Throughout this year I have attempted to write about cultivating an attitude of gratitude.
We can learn to say thank-you in our every day conversations.
We can learn to say I love you or I appreciate you.
We can learn that joy is not the same as being happy.
Happy people are not always joyful people in their spirit.
Great joy is about fulfillment deep within us
no matter what our circumstance is.
Things can be really hard but we can still consider it all joy.
For we know all things are for a purpose and all things happen to us
as a lesson for us to learn from.
They are life altering moments and what matters the most
is each of us have a choice.
Tomorrow a new year will begin.
Tonight we will clink our glasses together and say to each other
“Happy New Year”.
Some of us might be glad the old year is gone and looking forward to a new one to begin.
Some of us don’t know what the new year will bring but if we pause and breathe and
learn to become our own hero in whatever process we are in
we save ourselves.
what matters the most is our choice to say
“I will begin again tomorrow.”
I don’t know how the wise men continued for two long years.
With camels and gifts plodding along at a slow pace reminding each other why they were following a star.
It couldn’t have been easy.
This picture shows what it might have been for them upon seeing the chosen child.
Realizing their journey was finally over and this really was the precious one.
I wonder
would our joy be very similar as the wise men and
I also wonder
what gifts would we be committed to bring
in our own long journey to see him.
Gifts of faith
Gifts of belief
Gifts of thanks
Gifts of gratitude.
Something valuable and precious from our heart to his.
Gifts for the Savior.
A Savior
who grew into a man
and
who gave us
His ultimate gift.
HIS LIFE and LOVE for us.
It was part of the plan
For God so Loved the world
that he gave his only begotten son
so that who so ever believes in him should not perish
but have ever lasting life.
John 3:16
The plan was for us from the very beginning.
It was not an accident or unplanned birth.
This baby was chosen years before he actually arrived.
A baby was born for all mankind to receive a gift for a life time.
The choice is ours to make whether we will accept it.
Matthew 2:9-11 says:
“After they had heard the king, they went on their way, and the star they had seen when it rose went ahead of them until it stopped over the place where the child was. When they saw the star, they were overjoyed. On coming to the house, they saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshiped him. Then they opened their treasures and presented him with gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh.”
The story of the wise men is often not as accurate as it should be.
In most nativity sets we have them visiting Mary and Joseph and the baby in the manger and gazing at the newborn baby in wonderment. In reality scholars have written that the wise men didn’t find him for two years.
It was a long journey for them and since a camel can only walk 20 miles a day they had to pace themselves and go slow.
There was no fast way to get there.
Over mountains and valleys the quest stayed the same for them.
They wanted to meet the ‘Holy Child’.
It was difficult and often in the midst of many chaotic days.
As the journey continued for the wise men
I believe each time someone came to Mary and Joseph and
confirmed that this child,
their baby was the chosen one
they held him a bit closer and wondered what it would all mean.
It is written that Mary pondered each word and kept them in her heart.
The journey was long for each of them.
Starting with Mary riding on the donkey
as they headed into a place called Bethlehem with Joseph
leading and walking alongside her.
Then the shepherds had their own journey to the place of his birth.
Then the wise men kept at their pace for a very long time to see ‘the Child’ and bring their gifts to him.
The journey to Jesus is often a challenging one.
Even for us.
I wonder if we are willing to take the first step.
Simplicity
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