Alphabet of Love - N is for New

We are only three weeks into January and this year already feels old. We discover again that the flip of the calendar page doesn’t magically transform old into new.  We may get an emotional boost at the beginning of the year, but few weeks into it, the emotions begin to evaporate like morning mist and we are faced with our old self.   

Old insecurities. 

Old fears.

Old string of failures choking us around our neck.

The older we get, the scarier it becomes to dream again, for fear of stacking more disappointments on the scales of faith.

How can a man be born when he is old? John 3:4

Make no mistake, old is not just a description of an aging body.  Old is the hardened way of thinking.  The unexamined habits of reasoning keeping me from seeing reality from another point of view. The crusty way of perceiving of the world, the people, and above all, God Himself. Squeezing Him into our little hard-set mold and expecting Him to speak and act according to our script and timing.

But, we can’t squeeze Him into a rut.  For even though His name is the Ancient of Days, He is not old.  We have a thirty-some young Eternal Son of God representing us before the Father.  He is like that perpetually new wine that requires fresh wineskins of our mind and heart, eyes and ears, a daily, moment-by-moment renewal. Unless we’ve grown old.  Unless we are satisfied with the old and it has become ‘good enough’. Unless we don’t wish for the new anymore.

And no one puts new wine into old wineskins; otherwise the new wine will burst the skins and it will be spilled out, and the skins will be ruined. But new wine must be put into fresh wineskins. And no one, after drinking old wine wishes for new; for he says, ‘The old is good enough.’ Luke 5:37-39

But new wine must be put into fresh wineskins. 

And I pray that the Lord Jesus would come

and pour His new wine of the Spirit

into this old bag of flesh and bones,

renewing what seems impossibly hopeless,

what calls for the weary compromise with the ‘good enough’ in me…

and in you.

Trusting that He will…

in His way…

in His time…

as He always does, according to His word…

and always saving the best…

for last.