“What happened to January?” How can the last days of the first month of the year have arrived, already? How can we have jumped from December’s end to the end of January? In our cultural way here in the U.S., January is a time when many folks plan personal regrouping, expecting to get with a new program, but before we know it, it’s today, and January is almost done.
It can easily seem the same with seasons, with years and with decades. “What happened to summer…to 2010?”
And, since I’m also in a church-life calendar, “What happened to Advent…to Christmas?” Yet even as we regret the quick-passing of a time-span, we are often looking forward. We look at the past and let out sighs of “oh, that was when things were good” and we eagerly look forward, buying candy dressed for March’s St. Patrick’s Day before January is complete.
In the mix of longing for something which is now passing, or was past, or is in the future, we may miss where we are, in this moment.
It’s an important place, for each “this moment” is one in which what is most important— in future and in past and in now—is present. This is the moment in which God is creating, just as God created in the past and does in the future. This is the moment in which God knows you better than you know yourself, eagerly longs for you to be at the most ease with yourself and those around you. This is the moment in which you may take your eyes off the calendar, off the watch, off the too-slow or too-fast passing of our timeframe of time, and say, “Ah ha! This is happening—God is present!”
God’s Holy Spirit brings us reminders of God—the multitude of life around us, the beauty of the January light on pines and lakes, the church bell that chimes at 8:30 each Sunday morning, the hand that reaches out to offer support. While it is sometimes in looking back that we most clearly see the actions of God, it is in each specific “this moment” in January or August or almost December again, when we can be in adoration to God.
Sometimes we need to surprise ourselves to get ourselves into a January style regrouping. So I encourage you, get out a holy book, get out the Bible, hear a church bell, go to church, talk with a friend, talk with God. Know that God is present!
I’ve had a wonderful chance in these January columns of the News-Herald, to include another kind of Spiritual Reflection in my own life: sharing with you what is of utmost importance. How can the end of this opportunity be here already, when at the beginning it seemed quite a stretch ahead of me? I wonder again, “What happened to January?”
It’s a common repetition, “What happened to January? To this week? Where did today go?”
When you hear any variation, may you realize, “in all of that time, God was seeking me!” And may you then know, “In this specific moment, God is seeking me!”
May you grow in the grace and
knowledge of our Lord and
Savior, Jesus Christ.
2nd Peter 2:18
Each month a member of the Cook County Ministerium will offer Spiritual Reflections. For January, our contributor is Pastor Kris Garey, Trinity Lutheran, Hovland.
Leave a Reply