Pastor's Pen -- January 2019

A New Year In the Lord

Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

A blessed New Year to all of you! As we rip off the last page of our 2018 calendar and hang a fresh, crisp 2019 one, we hear many people encourage us to “ring in the New Year.” Others will ask us to make New Year’s resolutions to shed a few more pounds and run a few more miles.

As the people of God we enter the New Year “in the Lord.” After all, this is the truth that is conveyed in the acronym “AD.” It is the abbreviation of the Latin phrase Anno Domini, meaning “in the year of the Lord.” So while the world asks us to make the New Year memorable, relevant, and significant by our actions and resolutions, God asks us to greet the changing year by remaining in him.

This leads us to an important question. How do we remain in the Lord as we flip the pages on the calendar from month to month, year to year? To be sure, we remain in the Lord by remaining in Christ – by seeing others before ourselves.

We remain in the Lord by living as the baptized children of God and continually receiving His grace in Word and Sacrament in our weekly worship. We remain in the Lord through prayer for self, others and the world. We remain in the Lord in devotions upon God’s Word through Christian resources, new books that stretch us. We remain in the Lord by studying his Word in Bible Studies such as we have at Rockville on Sunday after church and Wednesday nights at 6:00 p.m. These are ways that we live as “AD” people this calendar year making our faith relevant and alive.

Pastor Joanne