‘Twas the days after Christmas, and everyone was packed, stuffed, and slumbered – no more ribbons, no more bows, no more hurrying to hang the stockings and the mistletoes.

It is the week of Christmas-tide where everyone seems to forget the day, the time, and the hour until New Year’s Eve.

We’ve been to Christmas services, and this year probably two. We’ve listened to the story of Jesus’ birth, and the songs of how Santa counts who is and isn’t nice. It’s the time of year where we enjoy the lights and the joy of the story of a baby born under unexpected, unintended, and unideal conditions, and yet brought forth a long-anticipated hope.

It’s easy to sit in the warm glow of the Christmas tree or the candlelight while singing Silent Night on Christmas Eve and remember that Jesus is the true purpose behind our celebration, but it’s also easy to forget how He is the reason for our freedom the rest of the year.

Our salvation isn’t given like free coupons at a store after you make a certain expected monetary purchase. It isn’t a box you check on Sunday with the hope that it’s enough to carry you through until Saturday evening. It isn’t a subscription we can buy to gain certain benefits and exclusive accessible content. It is a relationship with God through the personhood of Jesus that we find our freedom and salvation, and it requires that we are intentional in our pursuit of holiness and the process of being born again.

Is Christ something we have a habit of only considering on Sundays, in hard times, and on holidays, yet easily forget or neglect during the rest of the year? How do we live boldly into the freedom given to us through the Gospel daily and not fall into the apathy of routine and the temptation to view our faith as normal and common?

With 2023 right around the corner, our New Year’s resolutions lists begin to formulate in our heads:

• Lose weight (hopefully)
• Eat healthier (maybe)
• Go to the gym that we will purchase a membership for on January 1^st (but only attend 3 times during the entire year)
• Be more patient (except in traffic)
• Make more friends (but never leave the house)
• Make this YOUR year (ignoring that every year brings its own troubles, and no year will be less troubled)

Yet whether we are making goals around our health, jobs, friends, family, hopes, and dreams, how often are we truly planning for how we hope our faith will grow in the next year?

I personally can find it easy to want to do new things or improve rather than take the time to actually do those new things or improve. It’s easier to say how we wish we had time to read the Bible or pray or invest in our faith communities than it is to actually make the time to do those things.

That same concept applies to everything on our New Year’s resolutions list. We won’t wake up thinner or healthier if we don’t make the time to go to the gym, eat healthier, and invest in the things that care for our bodies or minds. We won’t magically become more patient on January 2^nd if we don’t put in the intentional work to become more patient. We can’t make more friends and be involved in our communities if we are also unwilling to be uncomfortable.

This is the year I encourage you to reflect on words from Haggai 1:3-9:

“Then the word of the Lord came through the prophet Haggai:  “Is it a time for you yourselves to be living in your paneled houses, while this House remains a ruin?”

Now this is what the Lord Almighty says: “Give careful thought to your ways. You have planted much, but harvested little. You eat, but never have enough. You drink, but never have your fill. You put on clothes, but are not warm. You earn wages, only to put them in a purse with holes in it.”

This is what the Lord Almighty says: “Give careful thought to your ways. Go up into the mountains and bring down timber and build my house, so that I may take pleasure in it and be honored,” says the Lord. “You expected much, but see, it turned out to be little. What you brought home, I blew away. Why?” declares the Lord Almighty. “Because of my house, which remains a ruin, while each of you is busy with your own house.”

Haggai 1:3-9

How often are we falling into the rhythm of building our own houses and neglecting the temple of God in our own lives? I think it happens more often than we would like to admit.  In 1 Corinthians 3:16, Paul argues that we, ourselves, are the temple of God because the Spirit of God dwells within us – therefore, when we are not making the time to abide with God and His people, when we are not pursuing His word, His presence, or His wisdom, we are neglecting the temple and presence of God in our lives.

When we claim the truth of God as the standard for our lives, the Gospel as the source of our freedom, and Christ as the source of our salvation, we must live lives that are transformed and unidentifiable from the life we led before Christ. We must love intentionally, forgive freely, pursue justice willingly, and seek the Kingdom of God daily.

To live life as a follower of Christ requires us to have renewed minds and not be conformed to the pattern of the world, to carry our cross by dying to ourselves, as God died to Himself in the person of Christ. We must live lives with arms wide open, fists unclenched, and weapons down – live lives that seem foolish by how we love, how we serve, and how we believe.

Therefore, in the next year, I have a challenge for all of us: that we may choose Christ before ourselves. That we may choose Christ in the morning, in the evening, in our comings and goings, in our weeping and rejoicing, and in every moment in-between. That we intentionally grow and invest in our relationships with God and His people so that the Kingdom of God can truly come to earth.

I challenge us to lay down our own plans for building our own houses, and to make the time to build the house of the Lord in our lives, knowing that by investing in the temple of the Lord, we are building up our own lives in ways greater than we could’ve imagined. To God be the glory.

Happy 2023!

Sarah