Ordinary Time

Pause

So then, if anyone is in Christ, that person is part of the new creation. The old things have gone away, and look, new things have arrived!

2 Corinthians 5:17

It’s a new dawn
It’s a new day
It’s a new life for me,
And I’m feeling good

Anthony Newley and Leslie Bricusse in “Feeling Good” (1964)

Listen

Then he said to me, “All is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will freely give water from the life-giving spring.”

Revelation 21:6

Think

In this one verse, there are two callbacks to the Gospel of John. In John chapter 1, Jesus is referred to as the Word. “The Word was with God in the beginning. Everything came into being through the Word…” John puts Jesus at the beginning of it all, the beginning of creation, at the beginning of the Bible, in Genesis. The second callback comes from John chapter 4. Jesus is at Jacob’s well and tells a Samaritan woman, “Whoever drinks of the water that I will give will never be thirsty again. The water that I give will become in those who drink it a spring of water that bubbles up into eternal life.”

All is done. Jesus came to give his life so that we may be without sin – a new creation. His work is complete, the prophecy is fulfilled, the Lamb of God sits upon the throne forevermore. And we are invited into eternal, abundant life. Hallelujah!

Alex Flannagan

Pray

Dear God, you are epic. Your story and plans lay on the very edge of (and far beyond) our limited understanding.

You draw me in, and you open my heart to new ways of knowing.

Surround me with your love and fill me with your peace. That I may be a new creation in you.

Amen.

Go

“There’s a season for everything… a time for planting and a time for uprooting what was planted… a time for tearing down and a time for building up, a time for crying and a time for laughing… ” (Ecclesiastes 3)

Practice faith. It helps us make it through the seasons.

And as the cycles pass, remember that each ending is, in its own way, the beginning of something new.

Blessings.