Daily Gospel Reflection for December 31, 2021

Join us as we reflect, ponder, and pray together inspired by today's Gospel.

Today's Gospel: John 1:1-18

Another New Year’s Eve is upon us. If you haven’t already, you may be pondering what kind of New Year’s resolution to strike out upon in 2022. You turn a critical eye to what you are pretty sure are your shortcomings: overeating, underexercising, overspending, underpraying, and so on. We strive to come up with new rules for ourselves to tame our wayward wills. We often even do so sincerely, prayerfully, with the best of intentions.
God adores our good intentions, of course, because He knows intimately how hard it is to be human. He gave the law of the Old Testament through Moses, because He knew we needed boundaries—but He also made us for more. He made us for grace and truth. He made us to turn our hearts from places of striving against resistance against the bad, to places of yearning for the good, true, beautiful.

Like Christ, we are born and reborn because of God’s decision, not because of any power of our own. We matter no matter how accepted we are by people—especially by the person in the mirror. Whether we drop those extra pounds or add those extra prayers, we have no control over our lovability. We can’t earn it. We can’t lose it.

God yearns for us not in spite of our shortcomings but through them. May today’s gospel teach us to yearn freely, passionately for the good God Who yearns for us.

Ponder:

Where in my life am I resisting a yearning for what is true? Where am I holding on to what fails to satisfy?

Pray:

Jesus, You made Your home among fallen people like us, for us. Help us to see our failings less as division from You and more as roads back into your wounded, risen heart.