This devotion originally appeared Feb. 29, 2016
By Monica Miller, a 2018 music graduate from Chambersburg, Pennsylvania
Scripture: Joshua 5:9-12 (NRSV)
Turning over a new leaf is exciting! Starting a new chapter, getting a new lease on life. The thought of “newness” is inseparable from anticipation, thrill and adventure. It’s a change from the humdrum everyday blah – amidst dull routine, something shiny. Turning over a new leaf is a shot at another beginning. A new leaf makes room for revision. A new story. A new life.
As promising as it all sounds, there’s just one catch: a new beginning means something must first come to an end. In the desire to turn over a new leaf and start afresh is the parallel desire to change, to transform – even run away from – something negative. There is discomfort, dissatisfaction, frustration, hurt, anger, sorrow, pain. These things will always precede intentional change. Something wasn’t right, and we’d finally had enough.
Sometimes we turn over small leaves, and sometimes we turn big ones. The small ones aren’t so bad. The bigger ones, though, are a little more complicated. Yet perhaps the biggest leaf of all was turned in our Abrahamic faith when Christ arose. Everything changed, and the doors of God’s grace were flung wide. But in order to rise from the dead, Jesus had to have died.
In this preparatory season, we take time to acknowledge our brokenness that prompted our search for renewal, and we clear our souls’ workspaces to start dreaming. Jesus died, yes, but he rose! To turn a new leaf is to reclaim a full existence. And in God’s fullness we find hope, joy, love, mercy, regeneration, reconciliation… we find life, and life abundantly. God’s Easter renewal can be as small or large as we make room for. How big will you dream?
Scripture: Joshua 5:9-12 (NRSV)
The Lord said to Joshua, “Today I have rolled away from you the disgrace of Egypt.” And so that place is called Gilgal to this day.
10While the Israelites were camped in Gilgal they kept the passover in the evening on the fourteenth day of the month in the plains of Jericho. 11On the day after the passover, on that very day, they ate the produce of the land, unleavened cakes and parched grain. 12The manna ceased on the day they ate the produce of the land, and the Israelites no longer had manna; they ate the crops of the land of Canaan that year.