written on January 5, the first morning returning to work in the new year

“In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.”

My 2015, I lay before the Creator. A shape-less, useless lump of clay. Wet and slimy, it sticks to my hands and I am overwhelmed. So much is yet to be known – what will be shaped from this day? This month? This year?

Will it be a strong structure that can withstand the wear-and-tear of whatever is to come? Will the structure created be so bound to the temporary that by 2016, it will be relegated to a shelf as a relic to days gone by.

The questions and unknowns impair my thoughts and I find my hands unable to begin. I find myself without the energy to reach out and get started. I wonder if my inability to know where to begin is exactly where I am supposed to be. So I practice the discipline of letting go.

I relent my need to create the blueprints
I relent my desire for an instruction manual with an end product
I relent my insistence that the shape must come from me
I relent my assumption that it is my responsibility
I relent my inclination to pass off failures to others
I relent my desire to claim credit at the end

I lay it before the Creator as my act of diligence and stewardship. For perhaps my inability to get it started is merely a reflection of the fact that it is not mine to start.

In the beginning, when the Creator is ready to make me anew, I am a slimy shapeless lump of clay. And God says, Let there be shape. Let there be use. Let there be hope.

And there is. And it is good.  And I pause and give thanks.