Almost four months into the new year… and I am in love with it.

Today I rested….well after I got home from classes and obligations… I rested. I soaked the sunshine in that was so generous to come. I walked around outside… I saw the beginnings of blooms…of new grass covering the old, dead. I heard birds chirping songs of spring. And I couldn’t remove my mind from the Creator of it all. It is the Creator who gives new life, Jesus.
There is a verse in 2 Corinthians 5…and it says “Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he/she is a new creation, the old is gone. The new has come.”
Do I believe that? That the old is gone. The new has come. Today I am becoming new.

There is nothing that both humbles and excites me more. I don’t want to be who I was yesterday, rather, I am becoming new. Just as the spring has come… new life is given when we are in Christ. I am not my own anymore… my hope is not in this world, neither is my joy, or my peace. It is in Christ. I am in Christ, a new creation. It is the most beautiful thing that I have ever experienced. Life anew.

Taking it a step further, I refer to an earlier blog post. How can we be a new creation if we don’t know who gives life?
Jesus speaks, saying… “I have come that they may have LIFE and have it to the full.” The word life there is a Greek word and its Hebrew equivalent used in Ezekiel 37, where the Ezekiel stands in a valley of dry bones of what was once a vast mighty army. The LORD asks him: “Can these dry bones come alive?” Ezekiel replies, “O Sovereign Lord, You alone know the answer to that.” ……The Lord replied, “I will put breath into you and you will come to life. Then you will know that I am the Lord.” Then Ezekiel watched as the Lord raised the bones and breathed LIFE into them.
The words “life and alive” are used several times here both in the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament. We even see this same Greek word again in the New Testament in Ephesians 2 where Paul writes that “though we were dead because of our sins, He gave us life…for it is by grace we have been saved.” So…

Can God bring that which is dead back to life? A dead marriage, a dead friendship, a dead soul, a dead city, a dead church? Without a doubt. “Then breath came into them, they stood on their feet, a great army.” (Ezekiel 37:10) Christ… the giver of Life. And when we are in Christ, we are a new creation. The old is gone, the has come. Life has been breathed into us. We are no longer dead. We are alive. Hallelujah.