MLK'S DREAM

When Martin Luther King Jr. had his big dream while he was vacationing on nearby St. Helena Island, I don’t think he had envisioned his dream to come true so soon. 46 years ago he had dreamt that we would be able to live in a country where the color of one’s skin would not matter. That white children would be able to play with black children. Where a man’s character would be all that matters. When he had that dream, he imagined unity amongst Americans. In all honesty, I don’t believe he imagined that in 46 years The United States of America would be united enough to elect our first black President. But that’s beside the point. The point is he had a dream and God has blessed our country with that dream. Segregation was only a couple of generations ago. A young African American woman said, “The only thing Martin Luther King was fighting for was equal rights. It’s eerie that we’re celebrating King’s dream on Monday and that dream comes true on Tuesday.”
Times are tough for many. Jobs are being lost. Gas is on the rise once again. Houses are being foreclosed on. With all things considered, how can we find hope in a conglomeration of despair? We need only to remember that our God is a God who does not sit still. He had heard the prayers of so many that were tired, and can here our prayers when we feel we can’t go on. He had been faithful to those who had been oppressed and wants to uphold us when we are being crushed. When all hope seemed lost, God had shown to be the greatest hope that never dies. He is the one that gives change when change is needed. And He is the one who allows us to dream big and gives us hope through those dreams. HE IS GOD!!!
So praise God for these days of Hope and Change. Praise God for raising up a young man in MLK that had enough reason to throw in the towel and lose all hope, but never forgot that God is a God that does not sit still. He is faithful and He hears the cries of those in need. Let these days of change remind us that God is a God who does not change but helps those that call out to Him.

“The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.”
Martin Luther King Jr., Strength to Love, 1963

GETTING OLD

My 7th grade English teacher Mrs. Wolford seemed old enough to be my mom. She would come to class and drop grammatical knowledge on us daily. She would tell us about her family life and the things that happened at home with her old husband and her child. She would sit in the teacher’s room with all of the other old teachers and talk about old people stuff. After school, she would jump in her car like all the other old people to go home and live the life of an older woman. As a 13 year old, she had me convinced: I never want to be 30 years old like her.

This is a turning point in my life. This month I turn 30. I know some of you parents find it comical that I believe turning 30 is such a big deal. But it’s pretty serious to me. And it’s not turning 30 that scares me. It’s the reality that I’m one year further from being young and one year closer to being old. The reality hit me not to long ago when I said a word that I KNEW was cool, but a kid looked at me with this bratty little smirk and said, “Dude, people don’t say that any more.” I was floored. I had officially became Mrs. Wolford.
That’s the reason I get flattered when 13 year olds call me to hang out with them at Caribou. Or 16 year olds call me to see how my week was. And this has been made possible because of two reasons. The first reason is God’s grace. He has called me to be a missionary to the youth of Isanti County and has opened the door for me to do ministry.
The second reason is fairly simple: they have my ears and my heart. It’s easy as an adult to not be interested in the risqué world of youth and the culture they are immersed in. But it’s not easy to be a teenager in that culture. But one thing I’ve learned is youth love it when they have an “old person” in their life that’s curious about how things work in their world and when we give them a chance to school us on the reality of today’s culture.
One great opportunity adults have and need to take advantage of is sitting down with the youth and studying the “whys” and the “hows” of their world. This gives us the chance to understand why they do the things they do and act the way they act. Too often we criticize this generation and expect them to handle the situations the way we did when we were their age. When we can understand this generation, then we can understand how and what needs to be communicated in order to see kids practicing being in the world, but not of it.
“I have given them your word and the world has hated them, for they are not of the world any more than I am of the world. My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one. They are not of the world, even as I am not of it.”

– John 17:14-16

NEW YEARS RESOLUTION OR NEW CREATION?

Take your pick:
Lose Weight, Manage Debt, Save Money, Get a Better Job, Get Fit, Eat Right, Get a Better Education, Drink Less Alcohol, Quit Smoking Now, Reduce Stress Overall, Reduce Stress at Work, Take a Trip, Volunteer to Help Others.

According to USA.gov, these are the most common New Year’s resolutions every year. Looking at that list, I’ve tried a few of those in past years. The key word is “tried”. Whenever I make a New Year’s resolution, I get pretty excited. It means a new start. A chance to become a “better me”. The opportunity to create freshness in life that is much needed. But what it turns out to be is a chance to fail miserably in my attempt of a new beginning. It’s become such a standard to fail my New Year’s resolution, I’m starting to feel as if a New Year’s resolution is just as beneficial to make as having a Noodle Eater’s Hair Guard (see picture). WHAT’S THE POINT!!

“Whoever is a believer in Christ is a new creation. The old way of living has disappeared. A new way of living has come into existence.”- 2 Cor. 5:17

I realized that we need not wait for the beginning of the year to “start fresh”. We’ve been giving an opportunity today. The chance to wake up, take a step back and evaluate what our life looks like and start again. We’ve been made anew in Christ and we need to see what we’ve been made into and continuously align ourselves according to this “new creation” we’ve become. One of the dangers of being a new creation in Christ is we figure the work in us has been done and we leave it as is. Like an algae-filled lake in the late summer, we become stagnate due to lack of change. And the lack of change comes only because we don’t see what it means to be a new creation. We start to add onto this new creation all of the drama, stress, sin, anger, laziness, addiction, irresponsibility and so forth and figure that this is part of the “new creation package”. But if we are able wake up, take a step back and evaluate what our lives look like according to God’s plan of redemption and restoration, then we have begun to allow ourselves to see what needs to take place in order to start fresh today…..not next year.