It's not even a week into the New Year and we are already growing weary of New Year resolutions. The weight-loss industry, businesses, retail stores, all of them promising happiness in the material. Don't get me wrong, resolutions are not bad things. At times, they encourage healthy change.
But I want to offer a new kind of resolution. A prayer.
Yes, a prayer for you.
Whether you be a friend, family member, classmate, co-worker, professor, or an acquaintance, I prayer for you not just for the new year, but for your life.
I've left evangelicalism a long time ago, but part of me still has that Pentecostal in me. I wish I could lay hands on your head right now because I'm about to go all charismatic on you.
In the mighty and powerful name of Christ, I pray for you.
May everything you do, every word you breathe, every step you walk, be a testimony to the goodness and openness of God. May you recognize that you, yes you, are an intentional minister of Christ (whether you realize it or not). May you live into the next year and into your life realizing that wherever you are in your spiritual journey, you are an ambassador for a Holy Gospel that brings hope, love, light, and grace to a weary world.
I pray that this year reveal to you your calling and vocation. Oh, friend, may your hands finally find the work they were meant to do. May you heal, serve, and reconcile. I pray that if you find yourself in a position of influence (whether in a pulpit or a kitchen table), that you form and be drawn into a community so rich, so deep, and so diverse that you will find yourselves showing each other your teeth, but remain in fellowship anyway.
May you be given the ability to realize you are wrong on many important things and I pray that you would be quick to seek forgiveness. May you have the courage to try and make things right when you find yourself as the transgressor. May God fill you with the peace that surpasses all understanding and may you reflect that peace out into the world. Yes, friend, may you be Christ with skin on for even a few people.
I pray for messy apartments, dorm rooms, and houses, for late nights and early mornings, for dirty dishes littering your dining room table, and all of the other things that makes you realize that you are in unchained fellowship with other beloved human beings. I pray that you remember those handful of people to call when darkness presses in. In the same way, I pray that you would be quick to show up at the right time for another person. May you find yourselves breathing onto each other's faces the words of affirmation: that wherever you are in your life, God loves you without limits. There is freedom in that.
May you love.
Yes, love. Love. Love. Love.
Love your partner, love the poor, love the orphans, love widows, the powerful, the broken, the hurting, the sick, the angry, the lonely, the depressed, and the anxious. Love your family, your friends, and yourself.
Love your enemies.
Love so much and so brightly that you come to love the entire world in the fullness of God. May you love in the full expression of the image bearer he created you to be.
Let us love ferociously, defiantly, and resiliently. Let's be the ones who hold doors open for strangers, who bring hot casseroles to the grieving, who give people permission to cry in front of us. Let us be the people where the world can come and find sanctuary and refuge in our arms. Let us recognize that our embrace is a sacred place.
When we hold each other's arms and weep into each other's chests, and cry the puddles of doubt, despair, or grief, let us decide to take off our shoes, because this is holy ground.
May we open our heart for God, because he's here. When you open yourself, I can promise you in one way or another, something will happen. Whether it's in the church or in the wilderness of beautiful obscurity, seek and you will find. God is a crucified God who will meet you where you are.
I pray for your health and well-being. I pray that the scales from eyes will fall to the ground as it is revealed to all the unbounded love and unfathomable grace of our God. I pray for peace to be with you. I pray that you find joy in Amazing Grace. I pray that you know that my heart is always open for you and that there is always room for you in my life. You are worth my time.
You are worth God's time.
Peace, love, grace, and hope is yours from the Triune God.
Amen.
