Breaking new ground?
New Year greetings! We have finally arrived in 2021…
Like so many of you, we have mixed feelings about 2020. For within the currents of trauma and despair, counter currents of possibility and hope have also flowed, and we have experienced both.
At the beginning of 2020, Kate's blog post was titled ‘New year, new decade, new normal’! Like others, she talked about 2020 vision (i.e. the clarity or sharpness of vision measured at 20 feet that opticians define as ‘normal’) and the need some have to make physical adjustments to their eyes (aka contact lenses or glasses!) in order to attain it. She spoke of the need we all have for improved levels of clarity and sharpness of vision in what was the coming year and decade. Well, we are now well and truly into the new decade and we wonder what it might hold for you?
Our own thoughts and prayers have been absorbed by the theme of ‘ground-breaking’, as we believe this is very much on God’s agenda.
The significance of 2020 was ‘unclear’ to most of us, even as many caught glimpses of what lay ahead. Thankfully, God who is both alpha and omega was not taken by surprise at the turn of events (although the same could not be said for us… perhaps we’ll keep that to an ‘I’ statement!). God had already seen this from the very beginning, just as the future is also known by God.
We have now had an opportunity to embrace what can only be described as ‘2020’ clarity over this past year. Perhaps now, more than ever, we are clearer that truth really does matter, the world matters, our neighbours’ matter, the ‘least of these’ matter, what we mean by ‘key workers’ matters, the environment matters, justice matters, ethics and morality matter… feel free to add your own ‘matters’, the list is endless.
Even though 2021 is finally with us, so much still remains the same. The reality is, a change of time and date are merely symbolic unless new commitments emerge, especially as so many people continue to face varying degrees of chaos, heartbreak, and uncertainty. However, 2021 has also been accompanied by a sense of new hope and this can be galvanised into ground-breaking commitments full of promise. We know that:
Ground breaks when… fault lines or foundations are fundamentally unsound
Ground breaks when… the earthquakes or volcanoes erupt
Ground breaks when… what we’re building is greater than the groundworks we prepared for it
Ground breaks when… we dispense with patterns we thought were ‘normal’
Ground breaks when… life finds a way...
But Ground also breaks when… we do what we can to break the unhealthy, unyielding and resistant…
Martin Luther King Jr’s, ‘I have a Dream’ Speech, originally called "Normalcy, Never Again", was a ground-breaking moment for many. It clarified the hope and fortified the faith of what many believed to be possible with God, the breaking with the pre-existing 'normalcy'.
Like Martin’s dream, our hopes need to be bigger than our own small world of friends, family and community (especially while confined to our ‘bubbles’). We too share his dream of a God inspired transformation and we long to dispense with what 2020 vision has revealed to be the old ‘normal’...
We are in search of something far better...
What we have experienced so far, is not yet the transformation we long for, it is only the possibility of change. For while change can be imposed, transformation must be owned, it relies on our willing and able participation and contribution.
So, as you look back and look forward, what ground-breaking commitments will you ‘own’ in 2021?
By Kate (with a little 'help' from Cham!)
