Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

It stuck me that I can extend this greeting with some sense of satisfaction and hope for the first time in ten years! I have to state that this last year has been the best I have had in a decade. From 1997 on I have been on a very difficult and trying path. I have experienced a few highs, but mostly a series of valleys that have tried me and tested me in every way imaginable. Yet in this past year I have emerged from the mist and find myself today very encouraged and hopeful regarding the future, something I haven't felt for a long time. For years it was a matter of making it through a day or an hour! But little by little and day by day, I am making it, becoming more alert, clear and confident in God and His good intentions for me.
I am certainly one who resonates and identifies with the pain and suffering of others, whether mentally, emotionally or spiritually. I am grateful for that ability, especially having re engaged in ministry full time, I'm a much safer and more helpful 'minister'.
Here's the kicker, the same 'agency', 'organization', 'institution', take your pick, that brought such great harm to my life, 'the church', is the the very same that has brought about healing.
Having been hurt by the church and please I am not and never have abdicated my own responsibility for my own failings, but I'm pretty sure that the response to my failures was neither appropriate nor helpful to say the least, yet the fact is it is the church that has brought healing to me. The church in all senses, meaning in the smaller context of 'where two or more are gathered' to the corporate gatherings or more organized dimension of the church.
In my hurt I disconnected, feeling that was the safest and best place to live. And although it felt right and appeared justified, it did me know good what so ever. I was wasting away and drying up. I began to reconnect a little over two years ago, at the most intimate level, literally in the 'two or more' are gathered place. I re connected with a couple friends from when I was a pastor with Calvary Chapel Yorba Linda in 1978. For the first year, we laughed, cried, complained and whined about the years gone by. But in the midst of it all we experienced the love and mercy of Christ and His living presence. Frankly without even noticing it, I was being healed, life was returning and hope suddenly existed. At the same time I re connected with the local church, leading worship and ministering in areas of my giftedness and calling and that has brought me further along than I had believed or hoped I could come.
This is a long, long story and there are many twist and turns, but for today I just want to say that I am thankful and look forward to this New Year.
By the way I don't feel strong in the sense of personal confidence or ability, my strength is found in my state of weakness and dependence on the living Christ to live in and through me. It is His grace and His mercy, His unconditional and everlasting love that I depend on. No me and not my own ability.
So Happy New Year and here's to a great 2008!