Happy New Year!

In a matter of hours we will be celebrating the beginning of a new year. I am looking forward to celebrating with some good friends. Reading through tweets and posts, I see a lot of people hoping 2011 will be better than 2010. For some there's been heartache and losses. I have had my share of junk, but I have also remembered good. I have seen and rejoice in God's faithfulness in the lives of my brothers and sisters in Christ. I remember that while I've had a lot of failures this past year, God's faithfulness has remained and I have not frustrated his plans for me. His love for me all through the past year never shifted. So with the new year about to come in I pray this prayer for us all:

Heavenly Father, as I sit quietly before you on the eve of a New Year, I’ve got a healthy case of sad and glad going on inside of me. As I reflect over the past year, both of these emotions dance about, more like allies than enemies… for both are evidence the gospel is at work.

The glad? The highlights and headlines of the past twelve months compel me join the Psalmist, in praising you for your love and your faithfulness. Abba, as with each of your children, you loved me all year long with an everlasting, engaged, unwavering love…irrespective of anything I did or didn’t do. You didn’t love me more when I acted like your beloved child. You didn’t love me less when I acted like an orphaned fool.

You loved me every moment just as much as you love your Son, Jesus, for you’ve hidden my life in his. Thank you, for your steadfast love and fresh mercies that came every single day this past year… when I was aware of them and when I wasn’t. Great is your faithfulness. Concerning my life, you did everything this past year that pleases you. Not one of your plans devised for me was foiled or failed. This makes me very glad.

The sad? It’s precisely because you love your children so irrepressibly that I also feel grief in my breast. There were more than a few times this past year when I joined the nations in saying, “So where is your God?” You usually heard this complaint from me when you were busying doing what pleases you, and not what pleases me. When I wanted a butler you remained God. When I wanted a masseur you remained Master. Those were the times I began to look to my voiceless, sightless, senseless, powerless idols more than I trusted you. I own and grieve my foolishness.

Father, here’s where the gladness trumps the sadness. I will not always be a man in two minds with a divided heart. You will bring to completion the good gospel-work you’ve begun in each of your children. One Day we’ll no longer even be tempted to worship anything or anyone but you. Hasten that glad and glorious Day.

Until that Day, even on the eve of a New Year, prepare us for the next twelve new months of groaning and growing in grace. Bring much glory to yourself, as the gospel does its work in and though our lives. So very Amen, we pray, in Jesus’ faithful name.

(scotty smith)

"The church has waited long"

The Church has waited long,
Her absent Lord to see,
And still in loneliness she waits,
A friendless stranger she.
Age after age has gone,
Sun after sun has set,
And still in weeds of widowhood,
She weeps a mourner yet.

Saint after saint on earth
Has lived, and loved, and died;
And as they left us one by one,
We laid them side by side;
We laid them down to sleep,
But not in hope forlorn;
We laid them but to ripen there,
Till the last glorious morn.

The serpent’s brood increase,
The powers of hell grow bold,
The conflict thickens, faith is low,
And love is waxing cold.
How long, O Lord our God,
Holy, and true, and good,
Wilt Thou not judge Thy suffering Church,
Her sighs, and tears, and blood?

We long to hear Thy voice,
To see Thee face to face,
To share Thy crown and glory then,
As now we share Thy grace.
Should not the loving bride
Her absent bridegroom mourn?
Should she not wear the signs of grief
Until her Lord return?

The whole creation groans,
And waits to hear that voice
That shall her comeliness restore,
And make her wastes rejoice.
Come, Lord, and wipe away
The curse, the sin, the stain,
And make this blighted world of ours
Thine own fair world again.

- hymn by Horatius Bonar