Dear members and friends of Zion,
On a German website with artistic visualizations of this year’s Jahreslosung I found one that seemed really fitting at first glance. It is one of a series by Eva Jung from Hamburg, Germany, and shows the verse over the international sign or pictogram for an escape route or emergency exit… I guess this is how most people would understand our verse. When we come to a point where we run out of options, we eventually will find a way out – because it is possible for God. That is true, but there is an inherent danger in this kind of thinking, because it can be quite self-centered, making God and his unlimited possibilities just the projection of our wishes. If I can’t do it, God will make it happen, somehow, eventually…
Yet God is no escape route or emergency exit for our wishes, and Jesus said this word to his followers after telling a rich young man that he had to sell everything if he really wanted to follow him. When the young guy walked away sad, because he just couldn’t do it, Jesus commented with his famous saying that “it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.” “Then who can be saved?” was the disciples’ shocked reaction – and Jesus replies: “What is impossible for mortals is possible for God.”
God has his own ways of showing us these possibilities. Sometimes, more often than not, that will include leading us to a place where we have to acknowledge our impossibilities first, our frailness, and our sinful nature.
God does not come in our lives as a quick fix to our needs, may they be temporal or even spiritual ones, but rather in showing us that his ways are different than ours, than the world’s. It is in and through this journey of faith, often quite difficult and challenging for us, that our eyes will be opened to see God’s wide horizon, his grace, and his possibilities.
There is a quote by the American playwright, Eugene O’Neill: Man is born broken. He lives by mending. The grace of God is glue. My feeling is that sometimes God uses his glue in a very creative way, and that his idea of ‘wholeness’ may be quite different than ours and the world’s common wisdom. After all, it is the Lamb of God, broken and slain on the cross, Jesus the Christ, who brings us God’s grace and shows us in that very God-forsaken place that God’s possibilities are indeed without limits and that God can and will overcome, even through death.
During this year of our Lord 2009, which realistically is going to be a challenge for a lot of us, I invite you to look out for God and how he will choose to show you what is and always will be possible for him. See you at your Zionskirche!
Have a blessed year 2009
Ein gesegnetes Jahr 2009 wünscht Ihnen
PASTOR HOLGER ROGGELIN
Note: The “Jahreslosung” (http://www.jahreslosung.net) is an offspring of the Moravian tradition of choosing Bible verses for each day of the year – the Losungen, which have become an important part of German Lutheran piety. The Moravian Daily Texts began on May 3, 1728, when Count Nicholas Ludwig von Zinzendorf handed out a Losung, or "watchword" for the next day to each member of the Moravian congregation at Herrnhut. Thereafter one or more persons in the congregation went daily to each of the thirty-two houses in Herrnhut to bring them the watchword for the day.
The first printed edition of the Losungen, or Daily Texts, was published in 1731. The cover page promised a daily message from God that would be "new every morning." Today's Daily Texts are published in over fifty languages. The actual texts are selected a year in advance in Herrnhut, Germany. The Jahreslosung is intended to accompany us throughout the year and is chosen by the Ecumenical Association for Bible reading in Germany.
You can find out more and sign up for email with the daily text at: http://www.moravian.org/daily_texts/ (English) or http://www.losungen.de (German).
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