Well, today is the day for resolutions, and the day for our family to say good bye to Christmas vacation 2010. As I sit on the plane next to Kaeley and Tara, I realized, a good goal for this year. I am going to do my best to journal at least a little bit about each day of the new year. The journals- which will be in the form of a blog, will come in various forms and focus on different parts of our lives, from teaching, to being a student, from our neighborhood, to our church plant, from the Compton initiative, to working with other churches in helping the city of Compton, and of course the basic daily life of a Schuring family in the melting pot of Los Angeles. Now, it should be noted from day one, this is not a made for tv kind of thing, or a journal that is being written to be made into a movie later, it is hopefully an honest and sincere look into our very average lives. Thanks for being a part of it with us.
January 1, 2011
Today started off with the disappointing realization that a Midwest new year is not really celebrated. The ball drops an hour before our new year begins, and Dick Clark completely over looks the long anticipated change from the old to the new year. We rang in the new year packing and preparing for our return trip home. Kaeley was asleep working on her fourth new tooth, and honestly hasn't really acknowledged the change in years yet. Curious :) the new year quickly began with a meeting to discuss a return trip for Faith CRC to Compton. After a great meeting with Karen and a look at some improvements and potential dates, I am very excited for the return of the Pella team. From there, the day of finding old friends in a new year began. I had the privilege of running into Katie Sopher at Smokey Row, and left quite amazed at how quickly time has flown by! Now that we have Kaeley, there are definitely indicators, with her walking and all, but to see how much lives have changed in such a short time is exciting, yet hard to grasp at the same time.
As we finalized our packing it was time for some of the traditional good-byes to grandpa and grandma Verros, the disappointing news of grandma DeGraaf's recent fall and broken pelvis, and a good bye to grandpa and grandma Schuring. We left Pella, for our series of Christmas returns, largely because we simply did not have room for some of the stuff and had a great lunch with mom, Nichole, Bailey, and cousin Hudson. As we finished up the tour of shops at Jordan creek, we made our way to the airport. We tried to work with the customer service personnel to get an earlier fight into LA. With that anticipation, we headed to the gate. As we walked we heard a lady yelling "Matt, stop!" Tara and I turned, looked at the woman and kept walking. She couldn't be yelling at us we both thought. Well, she persisted and we casually slowed down, just in case it was for us, and sure enough, it was grandma Maxine's sister Mary Hiemstra. It had been quite awhile since we had seen her, and when we were not expecting to see her, she completely caught us off guard. After catching up just a bit, we were on our way. I will never understand all of the extra security necessary for babies, but if you honesty think we could put something in my 10 month old little girls shoes, we will gladly send them through the belt :). After verifying her liquids and yogurt were what we claimed we were on to. Our biggest surprise of the day.
As we stood hopefully waiting for the earlier fight, a strange yet familiar face caught my attention. It was Brad! My friend Brad, whom i had not seen for probably 7-8 years was sitting at the terminal waiting for the flight we were hoping to get on. Whether or not Brad would have said "hi" to me or not, is not quite clear, but I was incredibly excited to see him! Perhaps another time I will get into the details of our relationship, but Brad is a very good friend, and no matter what happens in life, I will always be grateful for his friendship and will respect him and hope we can find a mutual respect, despite differing convictions/beliefs.
I'm not sure that I wanted to go down this road already, in my first entry of the new year, but one of the most difficult things in the activities of today, from a couple of looks at the facebook pages of some friends, to the unspoken parts of conversations a lot has changed for some of my old friends. I really miss the relationships that we had, the memories of trips to adventure land will never be forgotten, but the journeys that have occurred since then, are very different, and I'm not sure how excited I am as to where all of us have ended.
Perhaps that is why there is so much joy in looking at a new year. Maybe that is where I am supposed to find hope in my disappointments today. One of the beautiful things God gives us-is forgiveness, our journey is not over and we have not reached the end. We get to celebrate this each day as believers, when we ask Christ to wash our slates clean, to forgive us our sins, to allow us a fresh and new life/beginning. Each time I actually stop and reflect on what I am doing and realize the errors of my ways.
Today, I am thankful that our society/world celebrates a new beginning with the hope of a new year. This release from the baggage of the things left undone, the friendships forgotten, or the opportunities we found ourselves too busy for. This New Year has already been a great celebration for me spiritually. It seems to really have helped me remember the gift of Christ's sacrifice in a real and tangible way.
2 Corinthians 5:16-21 sums this up pretty well: from the message translation:
16-20Because of this decision we don't evaluate people by what they have or how they look. We looked at the Messiah that way once and got it all wrong, as you know. We certainly don't look at him that way anymore. Now we look inside, and what we see is that anyone united with the Messiah gets a fresh start, is created new. The old life is gone; a new life burgeons! Look at it! All this comes from the God who settled the relationship between us and him, and then called us to settle our relationships with each other. God put the world square with himself through the Messiah, giving the world a fresh start by offering forgiveness of sins. God has given us the task of telling everyone what he is doing. We're Christ's representatives. God uses us to persuade men and women to drop their differences and enter into God's work of making things right between them. We're speaking for Christ himself now: Become friends with God; he's already a friend with you.
21How? you ask. In Christ. God put the wrong on him who never did anything wrong, so we could be put right with God.
