New Traditions

Last week our family picked out a Christmas tree at the corner of 19^th Street and 1^st Avenue, and then had the “joy” of lugging in 14 blocks to our apartment. It was a new and unique experience and a far cry from our long held annual tradition of driving to a tree farm north of Romeo, Michigan the Saturday after Thanksgiving, cutting down a 7-8 foot tree and hauling it home on the top of our van. Last year as we picked out our tree on a snowy day we knew that a special family tradition had come to an end. Christmas 2008 would be very different. And it is. It seems as though we blinked our eyes and here we are in a new and unrecognizable life as church-planters in the greatest city in the world- New York. Everything is new: Christmas shopping in the original Macys; (can you imagine a department store with 8000 employees?). The Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade not on TV but in our “backyard”; the lighting of the tree at the Rockefeller Center; an ice skating rink dwarfed by  the skyscrapers of midtown; using subways and busses to get around as we do our Christmas shopping.  As I write this sitting next to our modestly sized and exorbitantly priced tree, I can look out the window down 33^rd Street and see the top of the Empire State Building lit up for the holiday season. What change a year has brought! These will become our new Christmas traditions.

It has been nearly four months since we moved 650 miles east in response to God’s call to begin a new work in New York City. It has been very challenging and very joyful, although not necessarily both on the same day. We have learned much and know there is so much more to learn. And we have been amazed at God’s goodness to provide for us, to join us together with an awesome community of likeminded people, and to give us opportunities to touch lives with his love and grace.

As we move toward 2009 we are filled with a great sense of anticipation. This new year will bring great opportunities and challenges that we know we can only face with God’s help and direction. But our confident expectation is that he has led us here because he has plans to do great things to expand Jesus’ Kingdom and to make his outrageous love known. We are humbled to think that he has called us to play a part in his mission