Pastor’s Perspective

I like a new calendar, clean and unmarked. Looking back over last year's calendar is fine. You can see where you've been. What you've accomplished. What you've left out or tabled for a future time. But a new calendar is a hallmark of 365 days of opportunity stretching out into the future, yet unclaimed and uncluttered. It's a voyage of exploration.

History has given us lots of explorers whose examples we can follow as we think about those twelve months of blank calendar space stretching out ahead of us. Marco Polo. Sir Francis Drake. Lewis and Clark. Kit Carson. There are lots of others. Some compelled by greed. Some, like the three wise men who visited the Christ child, were motivated by higher ideals. In all their cases, though, the way was not simple, easy, or painless.

Ironically, we begin the new year in the season of Christmas with Jesus and His family setting off on a journey. But it is not a journey of exploration, finding new worlds. Jesus is the new world because He is new life. But His life is imperiled. Danger and the hovering hand of death will travel with Him all His earthly days. So, for now the family flees to Egypt and safety beyond a southern border, guided by angels.

I think Jesus' situation is incredibly important as the blank 2023 calendar sits on the desk before me. Whether the days ahead of my journey are glad or dangerous it's comforting to know that Jesus will be traveling with me. And for all the people in the world who this very day are fleeing and putting miles between themselves and violence, Jesus will be with them too, because Jesus knows what it's like to cross a border to safety.

Allen