the new year {twinkling}
I have this thing about white lights in Winter.
For a few lingering weeks, after the Christmas decorations have been packed away for another year, white lights will still flicker and blink warm here, winking at me, reminding me that the magic is always, not just for a season. Here and there, a bit of silver, the hint of a snowflake, the shine of a curling gold ribbon remains. Fire and light. I crave them. I’d look upon them always, holding my hands over the flames. I want to wear the twinkling like a robe.
As hearth fires pop and we hold mugs in our hands, we’ll hold all this heat, this light, in our hearts. Because as the new year begins, I’ll need more than just fizz and streamers and confetti to celebrate all things new. I’ll need more than one night staying up late, watching a numbered sphere drop. I’ll need more than resolutions, more than a bit of starry fanfare to weather the Winter. I grew in sweet sunshine, heat dripping from my cheeks. I have to wrap up tight and stoke the fire to stay warm. I have to train my eyes on the twinkling and let gratitude burn.
Because the Spirit is a fire, burning, bringing the new even as the body dies, our hair graying with the Winter skies. And holy newness isn’t just for a day or a season, but for an eternity. I am making everything new (Revelation 21:5)! This walk, always toward time coming instead of time gone, renews not once but continually, season building upon season, the garden of the soul maturing well past the cold bare-branch-bones of this life—begging, yearning up, reaching for light, for fruit—into the wild, vibrant, glittering Spring of the next. And every breath is His name. YHWH. Every step, His reflection. Indeed, to live is Christ. And before the new, the death of the old. Before the glory, the eternity, the victory—always the sacrifice.
And I have so much more dying to do. I know already what He has asked of me in this new year: less of me, more of Him. I am resolved about only one thing: the Spirit would loosen my grip on still more. Indeed, already He pries my fingers away, already He whispers surrender, full surrender in my heart. But this death to self is not the cold, dead, frozen process of mortality, things that pass. It is the hot, bright-burning, twinkling miracle of the Holy, the always, the coming. His is the fire that reveals, that purifies and builds eternity without turning Spirit-born leaves to ash. The leaves of the Spirit-tree never wither or fall. No, those leaves will heal nations. He would use me, the fruit He bears upon this soul, to bless.
But first holy fire must burn away the cold, the dying, the withering and earthbound, flickering through the Winter, well past the magic seasons, leaving me sterling, like lightening, white like the snow robing all those bare branches in glinting white light, diamonds obliterating the dull, the empty, the husk of life.
I love this about God–the always coming, always new, always redeeming. Look around. Even now, when skies grow dull and the wind cuts, sharp, you can see glory glisten. Beneath the blood of sacrifice, we are white, like snow; washed new, like a fresh-scrubbed year. We are blinding, twinkling, stunning white, like the white of his hair and the fire in His eyes, burning hot. Though they stripped and mocked Him, though He bled dripping, sticky scarlet, He now wears robes as white as fallen snow. He looks like lightning, and so does the new, the becoming until the flashes of His Coming, the Forever growing strong against the gray, dying skies of this shadow we live now.
Through the winter, as the year breaks new, lights twinkle against sterling. They wink at me through the coldest days, wrapping me tight, the Spirit’s gentle gaze upon me, the promise of glorious becoming, the always magic.
Come, Spirit. Fall fresh.
*~*
For inspiration on all things new…try traveling here as well:
