Reflect, Reclaim, & Renew
All of us have suffered some sort of loss in our lives. Whether it be the loss of a beloved friend or family member to death or betrayal, the loss of a dream, the loss of health, or anything else that was and is no more. Before we, as individuals, can continue effectively functioning in our life-after-loss, we need to pause and reflect.
After reflecting, how do we get back lost time? How can we rekindle relationships? How do we regain momentum? And what about those who were taken from us way too soon and without the opportunity to engage in a proper celebration of their lives? To reclaim these and the other losses doesn’t mean that we do not remember, recall, or recollect. Part of reclaiming is to do all these things. But it also means something even more challenging: to envision, imagine, and visualize the new thing that God is raising up in us and in our church body. We will bring with us, into this new thing, the lessons, memories, and some activities from the past, but the end result will be something new and exciting.
Every so often we must renew things in our life: subscriptions to magazines, gym memberships, or even our driver's license. If you are like me, I have most of these on auto-renewal. If we are not careful, the spiritual life we have subscribed to when we claimed Jesus as our Lord and Savior, can begin to feel like it is on auto-renewal as well. We don’t give much thought to the terms and conditions of the cost of our salvation, much less the fine print (my Bible has small letters) of the covenant, and perhaps we also need to re-examine the vows we took when we said, “I do, I will , or I believe.” A re-commitment doesn’t have to be a daunting task - renewal can be an exciting, life-giving opportunity!
