New Year’s Offering

Happy New Year! It’s 2009. You may or may not think about January 1st differently than other days. You may see it as many do, as an opportunity to start fresh. To give up bad habits. To start good habits. I personally love that it comes so close to Christmas. We’ve been focussing on the birth of our Savior. The gift of God. We’ve hopefully been thinking about giving. Christmas should put us in a good state of mind to start making commitments about change.
I was teaching a group of kindergartners and first graders the other day. We were talking about the gifts the magi brought Jesus.  I asked them what they would bring to such an important king. They skipped right past the hypothetical and each of them answered with what they would give Jesus. The said,  “Love … my heart … my life.” It’s interesting to me that as we grow up our lists become more specific or have more detail, but contain less of what God wants. He wants our hearts. He wants us to “believe in the one he has sent.” (John 6:29b)
As parents we get excited when the purity of those simple answers are seen in our children’s lives. When they can connect a statement like “I want to give my life to Jesus” with a selfless action. An action that shows they love God by loving the people around them. I think we all understand that there is no classroom or curriculum that will teach them to put their faith into action. We know that Christ will do that teaching. We do need to be reminded that we, as the body of Christ, will be one of His primary teaching tools.
What could God do with a group of believers whose New Year’s resolution would be to offer our love, our hearts and our lives to Christ?