Another Good Year in Christ!

Good Friday morning! Oh yeah, I feel the urge to write about old things today. Adam, Seth, Enoch, Methuselah... those guys lived a long, long time. Kind of reminds us of someone else today, eh? Okay, no more teasing of the aged on this fine morning. The weather sent us quite the air change yesterday. At the speed the air was moving yesterday these molecules we have now must have been in Seattle on Wednesday. I think I saw a buffalo tumble by sometime in the afternoon, the cows were all laid out flat in the fields, and the freight trains went through town sideways, just another windy day in the West. Praise God for the good rain too!

Over the next couple of days, we will usually look back on the past year. We do this because the world will remind us that we are supposed to do this. News shows will have the top stories of the year. Magazines will have their lists of the best of 2011. Charts of this or that will come across our e-mails. And we will be told that regurgitating all that we did wrong over the past year is somehow good for us. The idea is that a list of our accomplishments for the year is supposed to be uplifting. Unfortunately, many will try to come up with accomplishments and come up with nothing. Depression and doom sets in for another year. Part of the problem is that we tend to think of accomplishments that are awarded by humans. We didn't win an Academy Award, or a Tony, or a Nobel Prize, or some political office, so we didn't accomplish anything. How wrong is that? Others will look at how their sports teams did and decide that they had a bad or good year. Some might look at the size of their trophy shelf as some indication of their accomplishments for the year. I don't know about you, but I don't even have a trophy shelf. We have a lot of ways to judge how poorly we did this year. Maybe we need a new yardstick.

This year we had a lot of Bible study meetings. Each one is a victory in this dark world. In some parts of the world Christians are risking imprisonment or execution by holding a Bible study. They held those Bible studies anyway. A victory for Jesus. Missionaries gave sermons all over the world this year. Some of them suffered for it. We supported missions work through prayer and giving - another victory for Jesus and for us. Pastors led churches in worship this year. We pray and give and attend and work behind the scenes and support in other ways all of these missions too. More victories for Jesus and for us. Each time we pray to God for our brothers and sisters in Christ is an accomplishment. Every time we pray for healing for those we love is a victory. All those good deeds we did to show our faith in Christ were accomplishments that Jesus used to adorn His bride, the Church. You know, looking back we had a pretty good year in Christ.

Take another look at your year, and praise God for the privilege of serving Him!
Bucky