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After a wild 2016, Happy 2017!

    This summer I was in Belfast Ireland when the ‘Brexit vote’ (the United Kingdom voted to stay in/leave the European Common Market, after 43 years of having it impact every level of life). I talked with many people in the weeks leading up to the vote…and then afterwards, and I heard the calm assurances that Brexit would never pass replaced by the wide-eyed, wordless shock after it did.  Brexit proponents didn’t have a detailed plan about how things would work out after the vote, but they had firm convictions about things in Great Britain that couldn’t be allowed to continue…and in a day they ‘changed the world’ for every resident in Britain. I have followed the cautious changes and proposals that have been occurring in the United Kingdom as they carefully sift through their new post-Brexit world; …a world that is not unlike our own in the States as we face the New Year.

    To the greatest extent I am aware of, the incoming Administration under Donald Trump has the fewest political connections/ entanglements to the past of any candidate since George Washington.  To the degree that a Republican House and Senate backs him (and later 1-4 additions to the Supreme Court), this new president could totally rock our country at every level; and this translates to huge amounts of hope and/or fear on the part of every one of us as we face 2017 together.

    Times of unrest are always times of spiritual renewal and opportunities!  Christian artists and creators who have watched the stale complacency and status quo in our society and communities with some dismay, can pray with expectation now.  As Paul wrote to Timothy(2Tim 1:6,7) “I remind you to fan into flame the gift of God that is in you through the laying on of my hands. For God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power, of love and of self-discipline.”  Whoohoo!  Pray big and buckle your seat-belts, kids; 2017 is going to be a ministry year like non-other.