Blog
Renewal
One of the great blessings of life, and specifically the gospel, is renewal. We experience it every spring when brown turns to green, when the sounds of mowers, bird songs and playing children waft on the warm breezes. Life gets stale; we get lazy; everything is heavy until we are periodically refreshed, energized and unburdened by renewal.
One of our good sisters wrote: “The one blessing that I claim more and more lately is the blessing of renewal, renewal of the right spirit, renewal of the mind, renewal of strength. Daily I attempt to start anew like it really is the first day of the rest of my life. Sometimes I can, sometimes I cannot, but I rest assured that if today is the day of ‘cannot,’ the day after will cancel this and start anew.”
Insightful words, those.
Satan wants us to be discouraged, burdened and bored with life. He plants seeds of division and distance between us and God. And our present coronavirus crisis is a perfect breeding ground for his mad machinations. We chafe at restrictions; we tire of economic setbacks; we are frustrated by the mixed messages as the situation changes day by day. It is easy to become jaded by all the hype and hypocrisy.
Ah, but then there’s blessed renewal. Our country needs it whether we recognize it or not, but it is unfortunate that renewal often must be forced upon us. I don’t know whether the coronavirus is some sort of heavenly wake-up call, but like every other malady and misfortune in life, it is an opportunity to re-evaluate, recalibrate and realign ourselves with deeper principles.
“Therefore we were buried with Him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life” (Rom. 6:4). “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new” (II Cor. 5:17).
Spiritual spring doesn’t come once per year; it is ours every day. Claim the blessing for yourself.
