Happy New Year!

Happy New Year!  Too soon?  One of our fellow members said that to me on Sunday, and they are absolutely right! It is a new year for the Church, not just Mt. Calvary, but the Church at large. The end of the church year was covered up by a late Thanksgiving and our focus on the treasures God gives us to manage. You could also say it ended with a bang, as so many things happened in our city reminding us of the struggles and pains of this earth. Though we didn’t specifically focus on the end of the church year, it happened, and now we are starting a new one. That put us in conflict with our other calendar – our 12-month calendar – which says the year is still finishing up. It is a tension we have to manage.

We all manage tensions in our lives. There are moments we wrestle with being a good mom and good wife at the same time. There are moments to wrestle with being a good employee and a good family man. There are moments to wrestle with how to be a good citizen and proclaim our views in a helpful and productive way. The tensions we have to manage never quit coming.  Life is full of tension.

This year I bought a shower holder that was supposed to go in our bath. It was one of those tension rod types. I worked on that thing for over an hour, wrestling with this side and the other trying to get the tension to work.  Finally I gave up and took the silly thing back. I didn’t want to deal with it anymore. I didn’t buy anything to replace it, so the kids continue with shampoos and soaps that sit on the edge of the tub. I never mentioned it to Mindy because I didn’t want to tell her I didn’t figure it out. Things that bring us tension are easy to give up on.

The season of Advent is full of tensions. There is the tension of celebrating the coming of Jesus that already happened and the one still to come. There is the tension of Jesus being 100 percent man and 100 percent God, and of course there is the tension of us being both sinner and saint. Don’t forget the whole calendar thing we talked about earlier. As we walk into this season, we also have to managing the preparations and things our world wants us to focus on, verses the focus that scripture is bringing us to – preparing for the coming of our Savior and the joys we have in knowing Jesus. This week I pray that God will help us manage the tensions in this season, and in our lives, with patience and grace.