The "NEW" and the "same old, same old"

This week I am surrounded by NEW!  This past Sunday morning our congregation bid farewell to our senior pastor, Ruben Mercado, and his family (including his 19 yr. old daughter, Abi, who has been our eldest daughter Angie's best friend for eight years!).  They are heading back to their native Bolivia to continue pastoring there.

Then, Sunday night, our family and Refuge Ranch staff bid farewell to the Marshall family who are returning to Indiana to serve the Lord there after sharing their lives and love with us for the past two years.  (This includes their daughter, Joanna, Angie's second best friend...so, you can pray for Angie this week as her two best friends have left Mexico to move back to their home countries!)


This coming Saturday our family and staff will be participating in a very important event: Adrian and Vero's wedding!  Adrian and Vero have been on staff at Refuge Ranch and served as Victor's right hand team on the Evangelistic Medical Mission Crusades for several years now.  They are dearly loved by all of us and serve as "surrogate" parents whenever Victor and I have to be away from home for a date, meetings, shopping etc.  They will be married this Saturday, by Victor, and most of our family is participating in some way in their wedding.  It is hard to tell if the kids are more excited about the wedding or Christmas!

Suffice to say, these three families are all heading into new experiences, new adventures, new callings.  As I woke up on Monday morning, the only adult in the house with our 18 children (Victor is accompanying the Marshall's to the Mexico/U.S. border) I had this strangest sense of being "the only one". (Isn't that crazy how you know you aren't the only one experiencing a specific feeling or circumstance, but you certainly feel like the only one?) It was a sense of being "the only one" that wasn't facing something new.  In fact, I was facing simply just trying to make the old better!  Take the old, abused lives of our children and make them new; try to clean and repair the same old house that is getting too small for us in order to make it the best possible in which to raise our children; continue to work on a 13 year old marriage to make it better everyday, etc.  I almost wanted to stay in bed:-)

Enter:  the wonderful mercy, compassion and love of God!  I marvel at the way He speaks to each of us in the midst of our own unique situations, circumstances and feelings.  He immediately brought to mind Bible verses such as:

"It is through the LORD'S mercies that we are not consumed, because His compassions fail not. They are new every morning; great is Thy faithfulness."  Lamentations 3:22-23

(I had forgotten that this verse came from the book of Lamentations!  Neat!  When I was reminded of its book of origin I was even more encouraged because I had gone through my own list of lamentations that morning, just like this author, and had come to the same conclusion....keep reading!)

"Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day." 2 Corinthians 4:16

"Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will."     Romans 12:2

Through those verses the Lord assured me that I truly was not living the "same old, same old" thing day in and day out.  Since His compassions and mercies are new everyday, life is new everyday!  In Christ, there is no such thing as "the same old thing"!  Praise Jesus!

He also reminded me, oh so lovingly, that He is making me new each day in my spiritual being and through the renewing of my mind, which then gives me the opportunity and power to make those things around me new.  (Hence, James and Elizabeth get to repaint the first story of the outside of our "old" house!  I mean, if we are going to take seriously this thing about making all things new then let's take it seriously!)

Now, the most wonderful thing about our Lord is that somebody could write a parallel blog about all the new experiences they are going through and the surrounding feelings of doubt, fear, having to depend on God in the unknown, leaving behind what is safe, uncertainty, etc., while I share about having to depend on Him to make the old new, to give the strength to be faithful day in and day out, etc. and He would bring to their mind and life verses to strengthen them and lift them up!  The common thread through the seemingly opposite experiences, facing the new or having to renew the old, is that God speaks to us and walks with us through both the new and the old.

So, today I am excited about having to live the "same old" life because, in Christ, there is no such thing as "the same old thing".  In Christ, there is only "the same old thing" being made NEW!

(Note: Some of you may be wondering how having 18 children could ever lend itself to the feeling of "the same old thing"?  To a certain extent, you are right!  There is never a dull moment!  But even "never having a dull moment" can become "same old" without Christ!  Here is a video I took Monday evening after supper to share with you a "typical" evening at the Zaragoza household!  The two individuals on guitar are James, a short-term missionary from Oklahoma who joined the staff at Refuge Ranch in October and will be here until April 2012, and his sister, Elizabeth, who is here visiting James until Christmas.  Maybe we need to move up on the priority list repairing Josiah's drumset?!  Clarification: the kids are wrestling, not fighting!  It is the almost nightly "after supper burst of energy".  Enjoy!  Suggestion: you may need earplugs!)