A new study. A new group. And me scared and stiff, as always. My husband points out how I never like new things at first. It doesn’t help. But somewhere in the first hour when one dear sister says how the challenge to give thanks changed her life, and another one murmurs how praise is always the right way to fill your thought closet, this room feels like home again. This is why we gather each week, because we need each other’s reminders of what is important; need to tell each other again and again what is True and Right and Noble and Excellent. So we do not forget when the earth shakes, and the places we find our strength and security fail, that there is a Truth that remains: “‘…My lovingkindness will not be removed from you, and My covenant of peace will not be shaken,’ says the Lord who has compassion on you.” (Isaiah 54:10)

We are examining our thoughts, this Winter, looking hard at the words we say to ourselves, because somewhere we got the idea that if it doesn’t hurt anyone else, it’s okay; and somehow, we absorbed the culture’s standards on what makes a person “good enough”. But since when did the world around us set the measurements for what is right and wrong? And since when did the media have any kind of a grasp on what a whole, healthy, redeemed person should look like? And so we gather around God’s Word again, looking for His answers, listen to Paul’s earnest voice: ” So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for Him.” (Romans 12:1, The Message) Your thought-life too, because He already knows what goes on in there anyway– did we really think we could keep back a piece for ourselves?

And so we find ourselves going back to old lessons learned together: about being thankful in everything, seeing the reflection of God’s beauty and grace in all that is good in the world and listening for His whispers of Truth, looking for His plans unfolding and threading through our Everyday. This is why we need to meet together in the middle of the week, to stay focused and alert to His presence. A good start to a New Year. A good way to find a fresh start in life. And thankfully, never too late to start again.

When Jesus is beautiful to you — how can your life not be thankful to Him? (Ann VosKamp)

“Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.” (Romans 12:2, The Message)