Many of the emails I’ve received from a dear friend this year have ended with “Embrace 2014!” She likes to end with things that make me think, or things that challenge me. It’s what she does! This morning in my devotion time, I decided to dig deeper into her exhortation.
I started with the dictionary. To embrace, as you know, means to hug. I’m turning into a hugger, but that is neither here nor there. To embrace also means to accept or support something enthusiastically. We embrace ideas, or change, or whatever. To embrace them means to buy into them. To embrace something means that we hold it up in the midst of controversy.
A synonym of embrace is embody. This is where it gets good, or at least it did for me. To embody something means to embrace it, or to give concrete form to something…not mere words, but actions. It means to give life to something. To personify something. You embody an idea or a spirit or…Christ. We are His hands and feet. We are His messengers. When we put on Christ, we begin to give concrete form to someone we have never seen. It’s faith in action! We begin to do what God wants us to do. We begin to go where He wants us to go. Our words are His words. His will is our desire. You get the picture. And so will others who see God through you. C. S. Lewis once said, “Don’t shine so that others can see you. Shine so that, through you, others can see Him.”
I know that when my friend says, “Embrace 2014!”, she means to take life by the horns and live passionately and in all fullness. But I think that to do that, we have to embody Christ. We have to exemplify His character. We have to have the mind of Christ. We have to see things as Christ sees them if we are to truly embrace every moment!
Tornadoes & Rainbows 