A new year and new invitations
At The Well This Week
Happy New Year! We hope your 2023 is off to a restful/fruitful/joy-filled start. Here are a few of our favorite pieces for the season.
End-of-Year Gratitude: Genuine or Gut-Churning?
”Gratitude is like a free, biblically-based superfood. We’d be foolish not to eat up — especially at the close of a year as harrowing as 2020.
For some of us, though, the call to be grateful may sound about as appealing as the invitation to eat certain superfoods. (I’m looking at you, liver!) And I want to suggest that this gag reflex is worth pondering.”
Why I Make New Year's Resolutions in February
”I find myself frequently looking for opportunities for a reset in my life, certainly more than once every year. I know how changeable I am, how prone to distraction, and how vulnerable to temptation. But at the same time, I have high ideals, deeply ingrained expectations for myself, and a wild belief that God has put me on this earth to do important work.
For that reason, I need help remembering — remembering who I am, to what I am called, how to keep my body healthy.”
“When we look back at the account of the magi in Matthew 2, we notice that they came “from the East” some distance away. On Epiphany, we celebrate their arrival. This image of foreigners worshipping Jesus is an image of the gospel. Though Jesus was born King of the Jews, the good news of Jesus’ birth is for all people, both Jew and Gentile.”
“There is more blessing God wants to give out, and I don’t want to miss it because I’m too busy believing old lies or mad that I’m seemingly in this same spot. Perhaps I need to embrace the situation in my life that has brought about this insecurity again, thank God for it, and ask him for truth and freedom in this new point on the mountain so I can fully enjoy the current view.”
And, if you missed our Advent series, you can still check it out — especially the last installment on Embracing a New Year.
”Gather up your reflections for a moment, and give thanks to the God who reveals his good news and invites us to explore it in the coming year.”
You’re Invited!
Spring 2023 book club. What is my vocation in all the complexity that my life is right now? Do you look back with nostalgia at a different time in your life where discovering God’s purposes for you seemed less complex than it is today? Are you at a crossroads now, trying to discern what God is saying to you in the present? Maybe you are concerned about missing out on God’s will for the future? Or you might be too busy making sure that none of your spinning plates fall and crash to consider how God is in the mix.
If these pictures describe you — or you just want the scintillating company of fellow women academics — join us Wednesday nights at 9:00 p.m. Eastern beginning February 1, 2023 as we discuss Your Calling Here and Now by Gordon Smith. Click here for more information and to register — you’ll receive a code for 40% off the book!
Join us for Weekly Prayer. Click here for more information.
One More Thing We Loved This Week
Here is one silly thing that made me smile this week, in case you need a quick break: Cauliflower and Broccoli Poodles