TUESDAY, JANUARY 3, 2012 -- ASTONISHED BY THIS GOOD LIFE

God is completely filled with beauty, goodness, and kindness.  He has nothing ugly, nothing bad, and nothing harsh or unkind in His nature.  We are created in that same beauty, goodness, and kindness because we are created in God’s image.  On top of that, when we invite Him in, God chooses to come and live His wonderful nature in us and through us.

There is nothing ugly, nothing useless, nothing broken beyond repair about any of our lives.  There is no hopeless set of painful thoughts we have to carry on with.  There are no heavy burdens of painful guilt, shame, or rejection that need weigh us down.  God makes a new life of beauty, goodness, and kindness available to us right now.  He always has.  He is now offering.  He always will.  This new life is actually wonderful beyond our ability to imagine it.

The wisdom we speak of is the mystery of God—his plan that was previously hidden, even though he made it for our ultimate glory before the world began. .....“No eye has seen, no ear has heard, and no mind has imagined what God has prepared for those who love him.”  .... But it was to us that God revealed these things by his Spirit. For his Spirit searches out everything and shows us God’s deep secrets. No one can know a person’s thoughts except that person’s own spirit, and no one can know God’s thoughts except God’s own Spirit. And we have received God’s Spirit (not the world’s spirit), so we can know the wonderful things God has freely given us. (1 Corinthians 2:7, 9-12)

God is inviting you and I today to a new life with Him where we are astonished over and over again by our experience of goodness.  Will we give over the old life to God?  Will we welcome and enter into the new, unimaginably beautiful life God is offering us today?