30 Days: Out with the Old & In with the New
I’m going to be real annoying for some of you who know this information already, for 30 days (TODAY is my 30th day..PTL!!) I have challenged myself. I made a commitment, that for 30 days I would “experience food freedom” by eliminating sugar, alcohol, grains, legumes, soy, and dairy, joy, life, and friends from my diet and strictly eat “whole foods” (I am kidding about the joy, life and friends part...but at points it felt like that). 30 days is not a long time in the grand scheme of things. This 30 days has felt like forever, the longest 30 days in the history of the world, an impossible endeavor. I have wanted to give up a million times.
30 days makes me think of our members. Especially our new members. We ask that for their first 30 days they try on Hope Street. See what it is like. Meet some staff, try a class or two, come to the community meeting, be present, pay your membership, provide a random urine sample, follow the basic hour rules of curfew, signing in and out, adhere to visiting hours, check out James Place, seek employment, the list goes on. I see how that can be a lot for many of the men and women who are coming here from situations that are less than desirable. I can see how trying on something new leaves them vulnerable when the something old seems more comfortable and predictable. Old is easy. New is hard. I can feel their frustration. I can feel their anger. I can feel their discomfort. I can feel their confusion. I can feel their wanting to “throw the towel in”. Old wasn’t so bad, was it??
Yahweh. I give you praise and thanks for the old and man oh man..THANK YOU for the new. Thank you for the perspective that old is comfortable, predictable, fits like a glove. Wow...thank you for perspective that new is freedom-filled. Jesus, thank you for being our never changing and always present God, in the old and the new. LORD, pour out your Spirit as you have done so many times onto the men and women and children that are in their “30 days”. Allow them to see and feel that because of union with you, the Messiah, they too can have a fresh start, they are created new. The old life is gone; a new life burgeons! (MSG). LORD, give us your eyes. Remove our "me" perspective and replace it with Your perspective as we walk along side the men, women and children inside your Greenhouse in their time of old to new.
Amen,
Rach
