How many people have, over the past year, found heartache
and sorrow because they have relied on something or someone who has failed
them? Elections that have torn families and communities apart, a forgetful
moment that has caused someone to fail another, a word spoken in haste that has
fractured a relationship. These are times from our past that we would rather
forget but the memories tend to return like a boomerang and hit us when we are
not watching.
Truth be told, over the past year I have messed up and
caused a few issues and have tried to make restitution. Some have forgiven,
some have held onto the anger but through it all we are still here and we are
still bathed in the glory of God regardless of our human faults. I want to
throw this out there. Are we truly living if we are holding onto the past in
expectation that the past can be relived and changed? A car crash that happened
in January can’t be revisited, the circumstances changed so the accident never
happened thus changing the events, just to placate our own desires of a pleasant
journey. It happened, we learn from it
and move forward rather than dwell and stew over the events or incidents so
that we are encumbered, shackled even, to the actions of the past.
My Father in Heaven knows my every move and my every
thought. He cares for me with infinite love and gave up His own Son so that I
may know the grace and glory of God not only here on earth but also in Heaven
when my time comes. To know this message is to know the perfect release. To know
God’s grace, His perfect forgiveness of my sins, is to know life. When we take
the measures of our past and those things that we have held onto and give them
up to a loving and forgiving Father, it is then that I shall live; that we
shall live. The things of the past are gone and done, the things of the future
are ahead and will be known soon enough. Life is a gift, that is why it is the
present. The time has come to live in God’s love and to understand that He is
in control and that our future is secure in His glory. God has made it
abundantly clear that the future is in His control regardless of what we
predict and stress over. To know this is to truly live.
This Sunday marks the start of 2017. Let us resolve to live;
live in His blessings and His grace. When we recognize this we shall truly
live.
Happy New Year
Pastor Todd