Resolutions

(This is a re-posting of my monthly letter for the newsletter for Holy Cross)
We are coming up to the end of a new year and the beginning of another. With the holidays and the celebration of New Year’s Eve we tend to make resolutions to be better in the New Year. You can end this sentence, “This year I promise I will…” with a variety of endings. Most likely it would be a good thing to be resolved, but promise without action means nothing. Promising to diet is great until you realize you still have five batches of cookies to eat. The promise of exercise is great until you realize that you have gone so long without exercising that the first session you exercise again make you stiff for a week. Resolutions are often better remembered as great ideas that you haven’t been able to keep in the past, but this year will be different. And what makes it worse, is most resolutions are things that we should already be doing. Call it willpower, lack of time, or whatever you will, but we are sinful humans and we tend to be good at finding excuses for not doing the things that we ought to be doing already. Exercise, eating healthy foods, and other resolutions are things that we should be attempting to do anyways, without “New Year’s Resolutions.”
We make the resolutions to become better human beings though because we know that we are not perfect. We know that we should be better, but we seem to be unable to overcome our shortcomings. Even Paul had this same problem. In Romans 7:19-20 he declared:

“For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me.”

Because of our fallen nature we are unable to fix ourselves.
Thanks be to God that we don’t have to fix ourselves. We have the Savior that came as a baby to take away all our brokenness and to declare to the entire world that we are a blessed child of God. He had no need for resolutions because he came in perfection to wipe away all imperfections. We can rejoice that God has done what we could not.
Go ahead, make New Year’s resolutions. Remember, even if we fall short another year, we are still children of God.

New Beginnings

This is yet another attempt to be better about letting people know what is going on in life, the universe, and everything.  It's a bit of an open journal, so some things will be interesting and well written, and other things not so much.  I'm leaving this open to anyone and everyone to find, so we will see if anyone follows it. 

And yes I realize that my grammar is often quite atrocious.   

--Bill

O come, O come, Emmanuel – A Prayer for the Future

Advent (from the Latin word adventus meaning "coming") is the season of looking forward and preparing for the coming of the “Babe of Bethlehem” with was called “Emmanuel” which means “God with Us”.  We adorn the church in blue as a symbol of hope, looking forward to the future.  This coming that we are looking for is not just the simple remembrance of that first Christmas morn that our savior entered the world; instead it is the second coming of Christ from heaven to bring life eternal to all believers and putting an end to all earthly strife. 

Right now looking forward in hope is difficult if we focus too much on the troubles of the world.  There is a lot of conflict in the political and economic realms, and it does not look like these conflicts are going to be resolved anytime soon.  The result of sin entering into the world was a broken world that is not able to find peace only sorrow.  As the church then we take up the blue banners of advent and stride forward knowing that even as we walk forward into great tribulation, we have the Lord of Life with us at all times.

This advent season’s theme uses the great hymn of advent “O come, O come, Emmanuel” and the Epistle lesson for each week and focusing on the church in prayer.  We renew our prayer for the one “God with Us” because this earthly life is too much for us to bear on our own.  Each week we will look at how God hears our prayers for Wisdom, our prayers for Life, and our Prayers for Answered Prayers.  We can pray all these things in confidence because Christ has already come and will come again.

God's Blessings,

Vicar Shupe