Well it’s the start of a new year and I am beginning it with a week of fasting and invite you to join. The hope is that we together dedicate the first week of the New Year to hearing from God, praying for vulnerable communities around the world, and reflecting on our lives. I will go completely off food for the week but feel free to fast in a way that you are led. That could be Facebook, music, coffee, or one meal a day. It will start on the first and go through to the eighth. There will be a diverse group of writers giving us reflections on a topic set aside for that day and I will post blogs during the day of their reflections. Today’s blog post to begin us comes from Enuma Okuro. May God be with you over the next week as we listen.
Jan 1-Spiritual Renewal
Jan 2-Children and youth, adoption and foster care
Jan 3-Women
Jan 4-Black men and incarceration
Jan 5-Refugees those looking for a home in other countries/immigration
Jan 6-Native Americans and indigenous people around the world
Jan 7-Hunger and homelessness
Jan 8- Church – break the fast this evening with a meal
January 1. 2014
Enuma Okoro
Christmas is always hard for me spiritually. It’s funny cause it’s supposed to be the time in which we recognize the depth and extent of God’s love for us. It’s supposed to be the time in which we sit still in awe of the Incarnation. But the truth is, for me, this time of the year is so busy in multiple family and cultural ways that I never feel I make time to dwell in its true depth and meaning. Rather than a season of reflection and spiritual resetting the last two weeks of the year often feel like a season in which I take permission to embrace over indulgences and self-satisfying behavior.
It can actually seem more fitting to use the first week of the New Year for the necessary work of spiritual reflection. When all the holiday-ing and celebrating is over what better way to transition back into the mundaneness of our very ordinary and oft times challenging lives. What better time to truly sit with the fact that God is with us, not just around the glimmering Christmas tree, but with us as we head back to our jobs, our complicated families, our still unmet longings and the disciplines and desires we still struggle to make sense of and to live into faithfully.
This first week of January leading up to Epiphany Sunday, I like to imagine that like the wise men, I too am beginning a journey towards the Christ. And on this week-long journey I hope to spend time asking myself some honest questions. I will ask myself questions about the places in my life where I still struggle to live into the person I believe God is still creating me to be. I will ask myself questions about the places in my life I need to be more courageous AND more adventurous in order to rejoice in the ways of God and in the gifts of creation. I will ask myself questions about the places in my life I need to stand up to fear and remember that God has given me a spirit of power, love and self-discipline. I will ask myself questions about the places in which I hide my true desires from God because I still can’t believe that the goodness and richness of God could truly meet me where I most ache and long for it. I will ask these questions so that when with the Wise men I make it to the manger next Epiphany Sunday I may be a bit more ready to receive the awesome wonder of encountering God. And I may be more open to letting God shepherd me into another year.