My reflection today is from Fresh Bread:
“ Close your eyes and just imagine the clean, white fluffy snow softly falling, covering all the drab spots of deadness on the earth. See that same soft, clean whiteness fall into your heart. Feel it heal the wounds, making clean your dreams and your hopes. Hear the God of new beginnings speak to you about the fresh start being offered.
It is this ‘God of freshness’ who encourages our journey. If we are to walk into the new year hopefully, we need to look at God as well as at ourselves. When we look to the Scriptures, we learn how much God desires new beginnings for us. This is a constant theme that runs through the sacred word. We here again and again that God refreshes, renews, heals, blesses, makes whole, cleanses what has become mired, clears what has become blurred, restores what has died, recovers what has gone astray. Yahweh speaks in Isaiah and tells us that there is no need to recall the past… I am doing a new deed… now I am revealing new things to you… for past troubles will be forgotten and hidden from your eyes. At the beginning of the new year, we can hear Yahweh saying not only in Isaiah but in our own lives as well:
‘Come now, let us talk this over… Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool’ (Is 1:18).” – Joyce Rupp