Tag: end of year

january

MarthaKimballLeave a comment

dsc_0001dsc_0003dsc_0005dsc_0006dsc_0007dsc_0011dsc_0013dsc_0014dsc_0015dsc_0019dsc_0024dsc_0026dsc_0027dsc_0032dsc_0040dsc_0042dsc_0044dsc_0045dsc_0047dsc_0050dsc_0051dsc_0056dsc_0058dsc_0062dsc_0064dsc_0065

She’s a red bird out in the winter landscape
all barren, bleak and brown
but made new
Because a child is here
and wherever a child is, there is life and curiosity and wonder
all things made new again.

It is early January and we woke on Sunday without electricity.  We lit our fire and got a text that church services would be cancelled for the day, so we snuggled in for a cozy morning.  Ice came down, blanketing everything, turning our bleak ordinary into something new, magical.  As soon as she had eaten breakfast, Phoebe bundled up in her red Phoebe sweater which I knit for her a few years ago (it still fits!) and went out to explore.  I went with her, exploring our usual and ordinary little plot of ground which looked so transformed by the ice.  All morning we heard limbs cracking and exploding in our neighborhood.  Generators were running.

I’ve been in a reflective state these past couple of weeks.  It used to be that I spent much of December reflecting on the end of the year and journaling, setting goals and listening to the Lord for His Word to me for the coming new year.  Now with two children’s birthdays and the Christmas festivities, I am far too busy in December for much reflection at all.  I’ve realized that January has become that time for me, and I give myself the whole month to go slow, to put my ear to God’s Word and listen.  It has been good to be in ordinary time, no big celebrations, just the quiet return to old paths.

I still haven’t processed it yet, this changing of years, the closing of the last and the start of the new.  I find myself more discouraged, tired and overwhelmed this year than I think I’ve ever been.  I feel like my plate is incredibly full, even as I watch other women juggle far more than I.  I feel my smallness.  I feel quieted.  I also feel more hopeful and trusting of the Lord than I think I’ve ever been going into a new year–can all those realities coexist at once?  I’m not sure how.

I find myself disoriented by it all, like somehow I’ve lost my way a bit.  My ear is to the ground, my face set firmly on His, my feet retracing all the old and worn paths.  It is good; He is my good.  Nothing can separate us from His love.  Nothing else will satisfy us.

I pray you and I hear His voice early in our year.  That we seek Him about the year to come and wait for a word from Him, a glimpse of Him, more than watchmen wait for the morning.  That we persist like a lover in pursuit of her Beloved.  I pray that we see the little red birds in the bleak winter landscape, all things ordinary made beautiful and new.  All the things we think are tired, old, lost — redeemed.

“You shall no longer be termed Forsaken,
and your land shall no longer be termed Desolate
but you shall be called ‘My Delight is in Her,’
and your land ‘Married,’
and your land shall be married.
For as a young man marries a young woman,
so shall your builder marry you,
and as a bridegroom rejoices over the bride,
so shall your God rejoice in you.”
Isaiah 62:4-5

 

kingdom come

MarthaKimballLeave a comment

DSC_0457

The kids are napping, it’s raining (again!) and so I’ve made a hot cozy drink, pulled on my long woolen socks and sitting here in the quiet.  I’m entering that deeply pensive end-of-year state that I go into every year around this time.  This whole month has been so busy, I haven’t sat down to write hardly at all and my soul feels a bit like the ground outside.. so full and saturated with water from all this endless rain, and needing a run-off.

I spent the morning packing away all the Christmas decorations, making all the spaces seem quiet and empty.  All is tidy now, but I can’t bear to put away the tree + the last strand of twinkle lights.  I hate this part of it, the part where it’s over and now all the green and red seems obtuse and I feel sad that it’s done for another year.  I crave the clean and empty space again, ordinary life again, but the holidays really are magical and holy and happy and so chock full of celebration that ‘ordinary’ feels strange and empty at first.  Will there be any more magic to be had in our ordinary moments, our Mondays in January, where we get back to real life and attend to our lists and waistlines?

I’m prayerfully holding open hands these next couple of days, as we say goodbye to and tie up the very last strings around the year of 2015.  I’m asking the Lord to show me His work over the last year, to show me the state of my soul, to speak to me a word over the year 2016.  Ultimately our days are short, these years are flying by now, and I’m always left wondering if I’m living my days in such a way that count for the kingdom of God.  Reading in the Gospel of Luke this morning these words by Jesus:

“The kingdom of God is not coming in ways that can be observed, nor will they say, ‘Look, here it is! or ‘There!’ for behold, the kingdom of God is in the midst of you.”
(Luke 17:20-21)

In Jesus’ day, when He walked the earth, the kingdom of God was literally in their midst because He was in their midst.  Today, the kingdom of God is here because His Spirit is in the midst of us, His children.  His deposit, His guarantee, His Spirit, His life + breath in us.  Immanuel, God-with-us still with us and walking among us by His always-presence in us.

This has been my pondering over the last many months, the mystery of the kingdom of God.  The mystery of Christ in us, the hope of glory (Col. 1:27).  This has been the mystery I can’t seem to explain or to shake: that His kingdom has come (upon His arrival on this terrestrial sod) and that His kingdom is still here and active in our midst because His Spirit is in us and accomplishes His redemptive work through us, and that His kingdom is still yet to come fully, awaiting His final return.  This could be the thing that gives meaning to all our moments, all our days.  This could be the magic that we find in our Mondays in January, in our ordinary moments that feel empty and unholy and unnoticeable.  This is the way of the kingdom, to come like mustard seeds and leaven, like a pearl of great price and treasure hidden in a field (Matt. 13).  This is the way of the kingdom, treasures hidden in the small, the overlooked, the everyday.

Maybe this prayer to reign supreme over 2016: Your kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as it is in Heaven.