What can an ancient word of prophetic challenge speak to a modern world? More than we might imagine--more than we might prefer. But the same voice that issues a stern challenge also offers a stronger hope--and that hope is timeless.
Adrift in a sea of information--perhaps to a degree like no other time in human history – we’re all looking for a life-raft known as wisdom: that insight into life informed by knowledge of certain facts but whose essence is the application of that knowledge at the right time, in the right manner, and for the right reasons. For our next season of life together, we’ll look to the Proverbs for the wisdom that reaches into the heart of reality and thereby allows us to flourish. We’ll listen to its pithy axioms and vivid images, not as formulas by which all things turn out well, but as proven experience we dare not ignore – and particularly because that experience looks to the Lord as the author of life and the giver of wisdom.
“If our inclination to both make, and then fail, New Year’s resolutions proves anything it is this: no matter if we be religious or irreligious, we are all aware of the feeling of being constrained by our innermost selves, and of the longing to be freed from those inner shackles. And almost yearly, until we give up in despair the possibility of the freedom altogether, we believe the key to our freedom is our own sustained resolve. But what if the freedom we seek comes from believing we are the beneficiaries of an entirely free gift? What if that’s the only way to the only freedom worth having? For twenty-five years Grace Mills River has grappled with and grown into believing in the only free gift capable of providing the only true freedom. In this next season of its share life and ministry, we want to consider again just how free is what we’ve received in the gospel—and then imagine how belief in that free gift frees us to act as freely with love as the God who did so to us in His Son. So in this new year of our new season together, we’ll listen to Paul’s letter to the churches of Galatia.” - Patrick Lafferty
