Hi Church,

I hope you're having a joyful season of Christmas and finding ways to celebrate the gift of Christ's incarnation through these twelve days!

It's New Years Day (hard to believe) and a time when many of us take stock. The slogan pictured above is part of a campaignthroughout major cities in the United States. While it is primarily related to self-care, the phrase feels more broadly pertinent at this time of year.

Proverbs 4:23 exhorts its hearers to "guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it." St. Augustine pointed to "disordered loves" as a fundamental human problem, keeping us from the life of God and the life God desires for us. At the start of a new year, the exhortation to protect our affections and guard or keep our inner life is one to be mindful of. How might we live in such a way that our hearts are oriented to what is good, true, and most lovely?

This encouragement is easily understood in negative terms. Stay away from sin. Avoid temptation and those things that might lead us from the life of Christ. Careful little eyes what you see.

But as we consider what true protection for our hearts and lives means, in the context of Christ's coming, there is a positive dimension to this exhortation as well. We protect our hearts by receiving the Gospel. By applying the truth of God's forgiveness, confessing and receiving absolution. Our hearts are guarded as the message of God's grace seeps into the core our being and the Holy Spirit confirms in us the truth that we belong to Jesus. We might protect our hearts this new year reminding ourselves hourly, daily, weekly, of all that is ours as "heirs of eternal life" in Christ.

We might also consider the ways we can protect our hearts against sloth, fear, and insularity. In God's upside down kingdom engagement with the poor, in service to others, in practices of self-sacrificial love are all ways of guarding our hearts. We protect our inner lives by engaging in the pattern of life that Jesus himself modeled. In a paradoxical way, we protect our hearts by following him who took up a cross.

At the start of this year, you may or may not be making resolutions. I certainly hope you don't start this year with an oppressive burden of "oughts" upon you. Alternatively, let us together heed the Spirit's call to protect our hearts, to hear the Gospel, and devote ourselves to the Lord and his ways.

In Christ,

Peter+

PS. Austin Public Health has shifted the city into Stage 4 of its Covid protocols. We are continuing to monitor this situation and will be continuing our policy of strongly encouraging masks indoors. Clergy, communion servers, and childcare workers will all be masked indoors. This Sunday's service can be streamed here.