On this, the last day of 2013, we all are prone to a certain amount of reflection. We ask ourselves questions like, “What did I accomplish this year?” or “What can I do to advance in the coming year?” Many people make well-intentioned resolutions about losing weight, exercising, or finally reading all the way through the Bible! While all of these good intentions are commendable, they rarely last beyond January 31!
For those of us who work in the Israel Prayer Garden, we look back over the almost three years since we first broke ground on this consecrated two acres in Corinth, Texas. From the beginning, when I first laid the map of ancient Israel over a survey of the garden, I knew when I crossed from one tribe to another. Finally, after three years, everyone who enters the garden will know, as well, because today we are placing copper plates along the pathways indicating the boundaries between each tribe.
As we cross the boundary separating 2013 from 2014, I urge you to ask God for a new understanding of the boundaries in your own life. This scripture from Acts 17 has ministered to me in a whole new way as I have watched our intrepid garden artisans labor in the winter chill:
“God, who made the world and everything in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands. Nor is He worshiped with men’s hands, as though He needed anything, since He gives to all life, breath, and all things. And He has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, and has determined their preappointed times and the boundaries of their dwellings, so that they should seek the Lord, in the hope that they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us; for in Him we live and move and have our being, as also some of your own poets have said, ‘For we are also His offspring.’ Therefore, since we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Divine Nature is like gold or silver or stone, something shaped by art and man’s devising. Truly, these times of ignorance God overlooked, but now commands all men everywhere to repent, because He has appointed a day on which He will judge the world in righteousness by the Man whom He has ordained. He has given assurance of this to all by raising Him from the dead” (Acts 17:24-31).
In 2014, may we all seek the Lord in the hope that we might find Him, and rest assured that we will be deemed righteous through Him that was raised from the dead.
Shalom, and Happy New Year!
Pam and the Garden Crew
