New every morning. Our world is being renewed every morning as the sun rises and spreads its warmth and light across a world that needs it in order to flourish and grow. Clouds and mist may hide the sun from us for a season but, sooner or later, the sun will break through and disperse the clouds and evaporate the mist. When we walk in glorious sunshine, it feels like we are doing it for the first time – again.

This drew me to reflect on our lives as individual Christians, as families, as communities, and as the church universal. Yesterday I preached about Scriptural meditation at City Gates Baptist Church, and I said this in my introduction:

If you always do what you always did, you always get what you always got.

Yet, it is so easy for us to fall into a rut. We live the same way day after day. We eat the same way day after day. Routine quickly becomes a rut. The trouble is that a rut is comfortable. We know where we are with a rut. We know where the boundaries are. We can see the way ahead. We are safe. Or so we think.

God is always doing new things. Sometimes I hear Christians harking back to what they believe were the good old days. If only we would do now what we did then. Well, if we did, the rut would be a hundred miles deep.

Let us not be bound by the past with its routines and ruts. Let us seek to know and love God in new and creative ways. Let us take risks. Do not worry what people think of you. I am certain that God amply rewards those who whole-heartedly seek him. Go on, risk it.