Dear Friends,

I am glad the Christmas Season spills over into the New Year.  We end the whole experience of Christmas with the Wise Men bringing their gifts.  They brought what the little child needed.  Gold for His physical wants.  Frankincense for His Kingly desires.  Myrrh for His death so He could be anointed.  In their Wisdom they knew what God had instructed them to bring.  Another word for Wisdom, of course, is Spirit.

So what will be bring this New Year?  What will we be resolved to do with our life?  To lose a few pounds? – hardly.  Unless what we lose helps to make this holy temple called our body better able to serve God.  To be resolved to serve God leads to deeper aspects of life.  Yes we could lose a few ponds for cosmetic purposes, but the emptiness of such acts come crashing in when someone who looks better than us comes into the room.  All that hard work for nothing.  But a body cared for fills us with the energy to go the second mile for God.  Wisdom tells us this is the case.  A life lived in God’s Spirit affirms this truth.  As a wise person once said, “Would you rather live ten years in a room filled with ice cream or a hundred years in a room filled with rice cakes?”

So what will we spend our lives on this New Year?  I believe each moment is so precious.  God has breathed into us an appreciation of life.  Life in abundance is everywhere.  It is found in something as powerful as a prayer answered or a leaf simply falling from a tree.  It is discovered in realizing how much the love of that other means to us or simply the ability to walk.  It is revealed in someone appreciating who we are or simply having enough food to eat.  Those are the kind of moments which make up life.  I can feel when someone is watching me, although I am never exactly sure who.  God decides which moments I am to be the gift of Wisdom.  How I handle a trying situation can be a moment of Wisdom or me having to be God.  Everyone wants to learn this so we watch trusted others and how they handle those situations. Someone may be watching you even now.

This sounds like a heavy responsibility to carry.  Yes and no.  The world says yes because the world exists for itself and not God.  Wisdom tells us no because we exist for God and God is the source of all our being and doing.  So we are offered another chance to come to a New Year with a light heart.  The Spirit of God is the light which shines into our heart as we offer the gift of who we are to God.  The Baby smiles because we have embraced the Wisdom or rather the Spirit of life.  I think it is time to offer our gifts of Wisdom – ourselves.

Happy New Year,

Gary