Happy New Year!

Happy New Year!

How is it already 2012? Man, time sure does fly when you are having fun. And boy did we have fun in 2011. 2011 was a big year for me and Nick. I graduated from Seminary, we traveled with family, we moved to Elk Grove, joined Living Water, Nick started working at a new school, and we bought our first house! Whew, no wonder it flew by for us right?

In the midst of all of the unknown and changes in 2011, I learned more than anything how much I need to rely on God for everything. I was telling Nick the other day that even though most people are not a fan of the month of January, I think there is something really great about it. There is a sense of a fresh start, new possibilities, setting goals and working towards achieving them. However, there is also a sense of incredible uncertainty; so many unknowns are held in 2012. It is easy to get overwhelmed at the thought.

However, after a year of seeing God provide for us in so many big and small ways, I have no choice but to sit back and anticipate what God might have in store for us in 2012. I know it will not always be easy. I know we will face trials, fears, anxiety, and who knows what else, in the year ahead. But I trust that through it all, God is right there with us and that makes me more and more confident that no matter what happens, 2012 will be a mysterious, wonderful, stretching, challenging, and exciting new year.

Blessing to you and your family this new year,

Jessica

Advent

Happy December! It is officially appropriate to play Christmas music in my house (and at my desk at church which I am doing right now) and our tree and  decorations are going up this weekend as well. Nick and I are especially excited to be celebrating Christmas in our new home this year and decorating it for the first time! I am really looking forward to this Christmas season.

However, this time of year can be such a roller coaster of emotions. There is the joy from seeing family and friends and then the sadness in remembering those who we cannot be with this year or who are no longer with us. There is the excitement of seeing loved ones open your carefully selected gifts and then the stress of busy parking lots, long check-out lines and dreaded credit card bills. There is an extra push for generosity for those less fortunate and then the overwhelming realization of the large amount of people who are hurting all year long. Like I said, a roller coaster. And the dips can so often overshadow the peaks if we let them.

This season I have been reflecting on the season of Advent, celebrated throughout church history during the month of December. Advent means "arrival" or "coming" and is marked with a sense of anticipation, expectation, and longing as we remember this holiday is all about the "coming" or "arrival" of Christ. As we look forward to and anticipate this holiday, we remember how those before Jesus longed for a Messiah, the one who would come and bring hope for the whole world. And this month, we get to celebrate what his coming meant for us and the hope that we now have because the Messiah has come.

What are you hopeful for this season? What do you believe that Christ can do in your life, if your family, in your relationships because of his incarnation? During this season, we celebrate and anticipate what God is going to do in our lives because we have hope that his arrival changed everything. I want to focus more on that this year, and less on the to-do lists and shopping and decorating. I want to think about Christmas more as celebrating Christ's arrival and the redemption and restoration that came with his birth, life and death and less as just another gift-giving holiday. That is my goal this Christmas.

Then, in the midst of those roller coaster emotions during the holiday season, I will be reminded that in every circumstance, God is present and has promised to restore the brokenness of this world. And I will have hope.

This week, I was given a free Advent Family Devotional printout from a pastor friend of mine, the idea being to go through one family devotional a day for the month of December to remember this season of Advent as a family. If you are interested in this resource, email me at jessica@lwceg.org and I will send you a copy.

I pray this season is filled with hope, peace, love and joy for you and your families.

-Jessica