Into the Fire

Many people use the new year to begin something new. Maybe it's a new version of something old, but it's supposed to be a fresh start. In reality it never matters what time of the year or month or day we find ourselves in the position to restart our lives in some way.

Whether it's renewing past commitments or making new ones, starting something over usually is the result of watching personal failures reach an ugly climax. As "they" say, there's only one way to go from there and that's up or forward or anywhere else but the present. Improvements are needed, wanted, and must bring change from the stagnant, unattractive mess we can find ourselves in without intending to have brought ourselves there.

It all may be ill-defined, or madly designed, but starting over or creating another beginning is what's left, and either we decide it's critical to find a way to change, improve, or create a better place to be in our hearts or our heads or both, we know if we don't, ultimate failure will be pending. And it won't be pretty. And we'll have no one to blame but ourselves.

As Christians, we open ourselves up to the fresh cleaning and renovation by the Holy Spirit – not that we didn't think we had kept that open to Him. It's just that the penalties of life have weakened our abilities to heed what He's telling us or reminding us or even instructing us to do to not only make our lives better internally and externally, but, in fact, to make our inner being better, more content, at peace with His sovereignty in order to let go of the anger, disappointment, cries for justice, and everything that impedes our progress as a believer, as an individual created for His glory, as a person living out the number of days given to us on planet earth.

Here's to starting over – whatever that means.

Father, I'm all yours, such as I am. Always desperate for you. In the Name of Jesus, Amen.