Oh, hello … Happy New Year! Who can believe it’s 2015 already? But yes – it is! Without fail, every January it takes me a couple weeks of writing the year on forms, correspondence, etc. for my brain to accept it as routine – such a creature of habit am I – and so are we all. We cling to the familiar, and often times we cling to it whether it’s good, bad or indifferent. We cling to the familiar, at times like a life raft, sometimes afraid to let go, turn and look around – and, in the process sometimes fail to see and grab hold of the hand reaching towards us, the new possibilities and opportunities that await, even the new blessings that God has provided. In so doing we are not settled in the same location, but in fact we are drifting away from His Purpose and Intention.

The eponymous book of Ruth – it tells her story, of how she lost her husband and seemingly her world collapsed, but she chose to adhere not to the comfort of her past, but to the certainty of God in an unknown future, saying:

“Entreat me not to leave you, Or to turn back from following after you; For wherever you go, I will go; And wherever you lodge, I will lodge; Your people shall be my people, And your God, my God. ¹⁷ Where you die, I will die, And there will I be buried. The Lord do so to me, and more also, If anything but death parts you and me.” (Ruth 1: 16-17)

….. and Ruth later was incorporated into the bloodline of Christ…………

I’m still spending much time in Paul’s letter to the Philippians, and in Chapter 3, Paul expresses that same unwavering determination to pursue and know God – come what may:

….but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, ¹⁴ I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus (Phil 3: 13b-14)

That’s pretty amazing when you consider he was jail – yet he was pressing in toward the goal for the prize! It’s fresh and new, 2015 but some things may carry over – bills, sickness, relationships, the thought of failed dreams, our circumstances. Nevertheless let us be as Paul, and press on to that upward call. If we are in Christ, we too share His bloodline. So let us now throw that with all its rich inheritance and benefits away!

Therefore let us, as many as are mature, have this mind; and if in anything you think otherwise, God will reveal even this to you. ¹⁶ Nevertheless, to the degree that we have already attained, let us walk by the same rule, let us be of the same mind. (Phil 3: 15-16)