Happy New Year! The ball has dropped in the city of New York and it is official we now must get used to dating our documents with the year 2022. I pray that this will be the year we finally say good-by to Covid, or at least to wearing masks.
Speaking of saying good-bye to things, I have noticed that as these years have gone by I have said good-bye to many things. My hair for one, my 20/20 eyesight for another. As we age, we often loose some of these abilities. My mom for example has lost some of her hearing. She is forced to wear hearing aids, which I believe at times aides her hearing very little. When talking to her even with the hearing aids turned all the way up, she often doesn’t respond because she didn’t hear the question that was asked her. When that happens I raise my voice and I know that the people in our building probably wonder why I am so mad at my mom. To them I am always yelling at her in the hallways of our building. No wonder they have not visited our church yet when I have invited many of them. At any rate, when my mom realizes that I am talking to her she does something that at first I thought was a little humorous, but now I see it as a lesson for me. The thing she does now when trying to hear what I am saying to her is that she will lean in to me, to get closer so she can hear better. I believe this is the very thing we need to do to hear what our heavenly father is speaking to us. Many of us may have lost over the years some of our ability to hear our father’s voice speaking to us. We need to lean in to him, get closer to him just like my mom so we can hear “What says the Lord?” to our hearts. The world is filled with noise that hinders us from hearing the whisper of our God. We must block out the world’s noise and lean into Him, like the disciple John who is said of him in John 13:23-26 that he was leaning on Jesus’s chest. Let us lean into Him this year and listen intently for His voice. He alone has the direction and words we need for this year. May we as a church lean in and hear “What says the Lord?”.