You’re eager to begin anew. I get it.

Most of 2020 was like a container of toxic waste hidden inside a dumpster filled with excrement buried inside one of those huge junk removal bins that, after chucking all the vileness, hate, complicity, pride, and self-righteousness we could muster out the attic window of our nation, was set ablaze while the world looked on in horror. And I’m convinced that, at least to some degree, we are all slowly suffocating from the fumes.

[Oh, haaaayy! You probably realized right about now that you missed me…..or not….]

This past year had me feeling some sort of way, and it’s taken a while to find the words. Something bigger than the election is going on, something deeper and darker than the havoc COVID-19 has wrought. Maybe you can feel it, too—that something is terribly, possibly irreparably, awry.

It’s become way too easy to reduce someone to a label or category and demonize the whole group. Not only that, but it’s encouraged, even celebrated! We’ve forgotten how to listen to each other and that there’s a whole life story that lies behind held values and conclusions. What’s “right” is processed and packaged and fed to the blind and starving masses, but we seem to have lost the ability, the humanity and humility, to admit we could be wrong. We’ve exchanged the hard work of love for quick, cheap judgement and heap copious amounts of shame on one another instead of extending a handful of grace. 

I’m not a planner, hence I’m not the kind of person who typically has enough forethought to choose a word for the year. I normally pay attention to how things unfold and seek the truth God has for me in it. 

But I have been paying attention. 

For all the hateful, condemning rants I’ve seen from fellow Chirstians on the internet, for all the tonedeaf posturing and pompous self-righteousness expressed in their “anointed” opinions, horrifically, I can look at my own reflection in the mirror and see that same unspoken bent within me. The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it? [Jeremiah 17:9]

Repent.

I’ve heard it for months now. A steadfast, subversive battle cry. A revolutionary whisper. And I’ve tried to ignore it for just as long. Surely, there has to be another way, God—ANY other way. Of course I want things to change, but can’t You just direct me to the latest HIIT workout routine, bible journaling plan, 30 day cleanse, or perhaps a new President instead? I mean, we’re friends and all, but not like THAT…. 

Repent.

Hard pass. Give me another word. Preferably one that’s good and hope-filled. I’ll settle for plain old inspiring or even “eh.” Something I can talk about for a little while and then ignore like a resolution. Something I can put on a bracelet or prep mini photo challenges for on Instagram. Seriously, God. 

Repent.

Uggggghhhh. It sounds tacky and dated and like one of those cringy signs someone slaps on telephone poles every spring without fail. “Repent. Let Jesus help you!” Stuff like that makes us look bad, God.

Repent.

It’s not funny anymore. I DO NOT WANT TO TALK ABOUT REPENTANCE ONLINE. I don’t even know what I would say. Or is it that I don’t want to think about what I’d need to say….

Repent.

Repent.

Repent.

….I’m afraid.

Repent.

Okay.

It’s at the exact point that makes us squirm and want to run away that we need to, in fact, press in. With a great deal of reluctance and ever so begrudgingly, of this I am sure. That’s where the good stuff is. The Life. The freedom. Even if we don’t know what we’ll find in the unknown. Even if we’re scared.

I’ve thought for a long time that love will be what stitches this broken world back together, scrap by swatch by frayed and tattered piece, but I realize now that repentance is the needle through which the love of God is thread. Repentance must go first. It needs to pierce our hearts and make room—a small hole for love to slip through, and for the long thread of everything else love tends to bring with it—compassion, forgiveness, unity, justice. Lasting, radical change.

You know the verse that says, “God is doing a new thing! Now it springs up, do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.” [Isaiah 43:19]?

This is how He does it.

Repent.

Find a mirror and look at your own reflection. Let’s start there.