After cooking through the holidays, you can find yourself with a lot of leftovers in your refrigerators. Half-eaten casseroles, pieces of pie, un-eaten filets, and crusted-over potatoes probably sit in your refrigerator waiting to be either re-heated or to be tossed into the garbage. It's the new year, and still they sit hoping to be eaten for lunch or re-constituted in some new kind of meal. However, they aren't the only thing lingering from last year.
Every year most of us make amends to start afresh with the start of January with new resolution. We will lose weight! We will clear out the closet! We will start on a new journey. Unfortunately, like the day old vegetables sitting in the fridge, there is much from last year that is leftover stinking up our lives like moldy stuffing or dried up turkey.
Things like unfulfilled dreams, good advice we haven't taken, calls we haven't made, and people we haven't forgiven are still lingering from last year waiting for our time and consideration. Rather than focusing on those things, we would all rather sling slogans around, like "New Year, New Me" or "My Season Is This Season" or "Leaving It All Behind." All of that is fine, but some of what is holding us back is in our past. And we get so much bad advice from pulpits at Watch Night services, that sometimes we only hear this: "Jesus will fix the mess we made...because I have a Destiny."
But it's just not that simple. It can be hard to put down Ice Cream, Pies and Cakes...if you haven't ever done it...once. It can be hard to say no to Ms. Wrong, when every time she comes over, ya'll find yourselves in a compromising position. It can just be absolutely difficult to go to the gym, if you don't have a pair of gym shoes waiting. All that I'm trying to say is that maybe we shouldn't overlook the small steps in life.
One of my friends used to recite a very well-known quote every time I was nervous about a new journey. She would say, "Palmer, the journey of a thousand miles begins with one step." It would annoy me every time she said it, but ultimately she was (is) right. In this case, we sometimes must look back at the past and make sense of our dysfunction in order to move forward. That's a very nice way of saying that you can't move forward without really identifying the problem.
For me it begins with esteem...and believing that I'm worth more than scraps. For me, it begins with taking a long hard look at spending habits and health. It does not begin with starting something new. It begins with looking at what is old. In some cases, I'm gonna have to throw out some junk. In other places, I'm gonna have to ask for forgiveness. And in many places, I'm gonna have to be more consistent...picking up where I left off. I'm ultimately gonna have to deal with my leftovers in the New Year.
That's not so bad when we consider that sin was leftover in creation...and God decided that sin could not be the final word on the corruption of creation. So God sent God's self in the form of Jesus to do a work which we could not do. And since I'm meandering right where a Baptist preacher would begin "tuning up," might I remind you that you and me are created to do a work that can't be done by just waiting or trying to run away from it.
This year, let's deal with the leftovers!
But it's just not that simple. It can be hard to put down Ice Cream, Pies and Cakes...if you haven't ever done it...once. It can be hard to say no to Ms. Wrong, when every time she comes over, ya'll find yourselves in a compromising position. It can just be absolutely difficult to go to the gym, if you don't have a pair of gym shoes waiting. All that I'm trying to say is that maybe we shouldn't overlook the small steps in life.
One of my friends used to recite a very well-known quote every time I was nervous about a new journey. She would say, "Palmer, the journey of a thousand miles begins with one step." It would annoy me every time she said it, but ultimately she was (is) right. In this case, we sometimes must look back at the past and make sense of our dysfunction in order to move forward. That's a very nice way of saying that you can't move forward without really identifying the problem.
For me it begins with esteem...and believing that I'm worth more than scraps. For me, it begins with taking a long hard look at spending habits and health. It does not begin with starting something new. It begins with looking at what is old. In some cases, I'm gonna have to throw out some junk. In other places, I'm gonna have to ask for forgiveness. And in many places, I'm gonna have to be more consistent...picking up where I left off. I'm ultimately gonna have to deal with my leftovers in the New Year.
That's not so bad when we consider that sin was leftover in creation...and God decided that sin could not be the final word on the corruption of creation. So God sent God's self in the form of Jesus to do a work which we could not do. And since I'm meandering right where a Baptist preacher would begin "tuning up," might I remind you that you and me are created to do a work that can't be done by just waiting or trying to run away from it.
This year, let's deal with the leftovers!
