My Blog

Tag: Risk

  • Will the New Year Really be New?

    New-year-concept-cubes-with-number-2021-replace-2020-3d-rendering_186380-953As I reflect on the past year, with enormous help from the media, I'm faced with these questions: Will the new year really be new? Are we going to be in for more of the same with the Coronavirus Pandemic? Will we make any progress in healing the racism, wealth inequality, and political divisions in our nation? What's the difference between December 31 and January 1? Really? Will January 1 be any different from December 31? Why is it we make such a fuss over the changing of the year?

    The fact of the matter is that even those among us who are most committed to following COVID protocols will be engaged in some degree of revelry on New Year’s Eve. I suspect even many of the “stay the course” brigade will have a list of resolutions. Our lists might include things like losing weight, getting more exercise, having a healthier diet, doing a better job of recycling, gaining discipline in attending worship and saying our prayers, spending more time with the family, reading more books, wearing a face covering in public, and being a generally all-around-nicer person.

    I have friends who are opposed to new year's resolutions. They believe having resolutions only sets one up for failure. That may be so, but then any resolutions, goals, or objectives do the same thing, don't they? Any attempt at change, growth, or progress involves some risk of failure. I happen to like resolutions because I believe it is better to fail at trying to do something worthy than to succeed at doing nothing.

    With or without resolutions, I ask again, how will January 1 be any different than December 31 or any other day?

    If there is a difference, maybe it is one of perception. The slate is not really going to be wiped clean, but we like to try to see it that way. And, in so doing, perhaps there is at least some extra room for something new to emerge in our consciousness, in our pattern of behavior, or in our way of life. Maybe, just maybe, looking at this particular tomorrow opens up room for something new and different. If that happens, we may understand God's words to the Prophet Isaiah, “I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it” (Isa. 43:19)?

    So, I'm going make some resolutions. And, I'm going to look at January 1 as a different kind of day and as the start of something new – a transition – and pray with all my might that God will have something to do with it so that it will not just be up to me. When I am forced by circumstances to spend more time alone, I can use that time to open up to God and God’s new thing. Maybe my first step, or yours, will create space for grace to see things through. Let’s do it together!

    Blessings,

    Ron Short Blue Sig Cropped

     

     

     

     

    The Very Rev'd Ron Pogue
    Interim Rector
    St. Martin-in-the-Fields Episcopal Church
    Keller, Texas

  • New Life Requires Risk and Trust

    The readings for this Sunday are filled with images of renewal – new birth, new life, new creation. These images imply that God’s promise for new life entails God’s gift of a fresh start, freed from the restrictions of our past lives in order to enter a new relationship with God through the power of the Holy Spirit.

    Lent is a time for engaging our new life in Christ more deeply, risking new levels of trust. The purpose of Lent is not to dwell on suffering, or to spend forty days bewailing our manifold sins and wickedness for the sake of feeling our pain. Lent is about engaging in the ongoing process of renewal, regeneration, and new birth; it is about encouraging us to trust and to risk going forth and being sent out with the promise of new life.

    Lent may require us to “think outside the box” of piety and religiosity, just as Abram and Sarai had to break with their past, and the Pharisees Saul and Nicodemus with theirs. The promises of God bear not only upon the future of our individual lives in relationship to God, but also upon the future of our parish, our diocese, and our Church as a whole

    To respond to the promise for new life means we have to be ready to redraw and rename the places on the journey. When the ancient ones told the story of Abram and Sarai, they were also inscribing new place names and creating a new social geography on the territories of their migrations in company with God.

    God may be inviting us to rethink how we do Church in light of the socio-geographies of the times we live in. When Saul the Pharisee became Paul the Apostle as we know him, he brought new words, images, and new community structures into being, “calling into existence things which do not exist,” by trustfully following Jesus into new life.

    Lent is for listening to that call in our own lives. In the words of James Russell Lowell, “New occasions teach new duties, time makes ancient good uncouth.” Lent is for careful thinking about how to step into the as-yet-unmapped future, to deepen our relationship to God, to trust the picture of new life in Christ, and for identifying the breaks with the past that we need to make in order to respond to the promises of God.

    I'll see you in Church!

    Ron Short Blue Sig Cropped

     

     

     

     

    The Very Rev'd Ron Pogue
    Interim Rector
    St. Martin-in-the-Fields Episcopal Church
    Keller, Texas