It’s late (or early) on New Year’s and I’m laying in the bed awake, listening. I hear the faint pops of fireworks way off in the distance and the muffled late night rumblings of my sons who are still too amped on Starbucks Mocha frappes to sleep.

I wish I could make out what they’re saying, but I know from the inflection in their tones that this after-midnight discussion is an excited one. A hopeful one. A conversation that is looking forward instead of backward. It’s the kind of conversation that always seems to happen on the one night each year when the old is gone and the new has come.

New beginnings bring out the best in us. They bring out the hope in us. They make us feel that anything is still possible, and that even though we’ve seen hard times, maybe, just maybe, this will be our time, our year.

Jesus makes all things new, and that one truth is enough to cause many of us to begin to talk excitedly about what is still to come. Maybe in hushed tones at first, but louder as we realize that for each one of us, the best really does lie ahead.

Last year we were wounded. This year we’ll be healers. Last year, scars defined us. This year, our Warrior King will turn our scars into stories to be told and retold, each time with a bit more joy, with a bit more of the realization that while scars may remind us of our pain, they also remind us that we are survivors who have been spared so that we can tell the stories of a King whose kingdom cannot be stopped, contained, conquered or explained. His war cry is the lion’s roar, and His warriors are the unafraid, the undaunted, and the unstoppable force being unleashed on an enemy whose days have long been numbered.

This King’s name is Jesus, and though the Chinese astrologists would want us to believe that 2013 is the year of the snake, we know better.

We know that this is the Year of the Lion.

This morning I had the awesome opportunity to waste spend a couple hours of my life in traffic court because my tags had expired a couple decades ago (decades, months, what’s the difference, right?) and I didn’t know about it until a local police officer pulled me over last month to tell me. Anyway, as I sat in court, I watched people a lot and thought about what I was seeing and experiencing and I wondered how it all relates to Jesus and His church.

Here’s some of what I learned:

1. Traffic court isn’t fun. There aren’t any people dressed as clowns making balloon animals and dancing around to fast-paced music. I kept wondering if possibly this is how most people see the church. Probably. And since we’re all about trying to make people want to come to church, we often go to great lengths to make church fun. And the longer I sat in traffic court, the more I realized that maybe that isn’t such a bad thing. It’s not the most important thing (like many of us in ministry mistakingly think it is), but I felt bad for the people who just sat there staring blankly at the heads in front of them and found myself wanting to help lighten the mood. But I had no balloons, and so I just sat there and stared, too.

2. Traffic court isn’t easy to understand. In fact, it took me awhile to actually find it because there weren’t many clear signs. If I hadn’t seen the long line of people each asking the person in front of them if they were in the line for traffic court, I’d still be wandering the halls of the courthouse. And then, once you’re inside, there isn’t a lot of help. If the sign in table is blocked by people, you wouldn’t know to sign in, and there aren’t helpful people directing you where you need to go. It made me thankful for the awesome folks that wear brightly colored orange shirts at The Gathering every Sunday so that first time guests don’t have to wonder. Clear signs and simple instructions go a long way, too.

3. Traffic court isn’t relevant. Well, at least not until they finally call your name, and at that point it’s very relevant for about a minute. But for two or three hours, nothing that happens in that courtroom has anything to do with you. I don’t golf much (because I suck at it), but when I do, I’m usually good for one or two nice shots each round. Those shots make me want to play again – eventually – but if I hit more good shots, I think I’d play a lot more. Maybe people don’t come to our churches because too much time passes between the really good, relevant moments. We should try hard to have more of those because there’s nothing worse than sitting through an hour and a half of irrelevant, confusing stuff just to get 30 seconds of relevancy.

4. Traffic court is all about waiting. This may be the biggest thing I learned during my two hour visit to purgatory, and so this is where I really want you to hang out with me for a few minutes. The lesson I learned was a hard one, and it has everything to do with a scary trend in the American Church.

See, all the things I mentioned in numbers 1-3 are things that we can do something about, and so often we do. Churches spends tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars annually trying to make church more fun, more clear and more relevant. We fly to conferences and pay more money in the hope that some of their creativity will rub off on us, even if we don’t have a creative bone in our bodies. I’m not writing this to say we should or shouldn’t. I am writing this to make the following statement:

We can’t do anything about the wait. Nothing. Not. A. Thing.

As I sat there surrounded by others who were just sitting there, I noticed how restless so many people were. Their legs bounced up and down. Their faces got red when they thought someone had been helped before they should have been. They started looking around the room as if they could somehow burn a door that they could escape through. And then, it happened. A clerk stood up and announced that if anyone wanted a continuance, they should line up by the window, and half the room stood up and moved!

That line started moving, and for a moment I really wanted to get a continuance, too. It wasn’t so much that I wanted to come back to traffic court another day as much as I was just tired of being in a place that wasn’t fun, wasn’t clear and wasn’t relevant. Can you relate?

But then it dawned on me what was really happening. As these people got their new court date and started walking out, they were smiling, sure, but they weren’t done. They still had to come back…again. They’d still have to wait…again. They seemed like they were free, like they were able to “get on with their lives,” but in reality their lives were still stuck in traffic court. In fact, these people had made the worst decision possible: they had quit waiting after already having waited up to an hour and a half. That’s like waiting for a roller coaster and then dropping out of line just as you reach the ride.

The shame of it all is that American Christianity isn’t that much different, is it? We grow tired of the wait, and we seek a continuance. We try something new so we feel good again, or read the newest book with the biggest smile on the cover, or convince ourselves that God really wouldn’t ever ask his children to endure long waits and mundane days.

Umm, have you read the Bible? Sometimes, the wait is exactly what God wants for his children. In fact, it’s in the waiting that not only we grow, but our view of God grows, too. To his children waiting in exile and captivity (a little worse than traffic court, but not by much), he spoke through Isaiah the prophet and said,

Yet the Lord longs to be gracious to you; he rises to show you compassion. For the Lord is a God of justice. Blessed are all who wait for him! (Isaiah 30:18) (emphasis added)

We try so hard to get out of the things that God puts us in, and ultimately it dooms us to a cycle of waiting until we’re too frustrated to wait anymore, then asking for and getting a continuance, and then finding ourselves repeating the same cycle again somewhere down the road. No wonder so many in the American church feel like they’re stuck. Could it be that what we’ve totally misunderstood what it means to be free?

I learned something important today in traffic court: freedom doesn’t mean we never have to wait as much as we never have to worry about waiting.

It wasn’t long after the mass exodus that my name was called and I took care of business. As I was walking out of the courthouse, a lady came up behind me, told me she’d gotten her case continued and asked if I’d gotten my continuance.

“No,” I told her. “I’m done.”

She let out a long, slow sigh and simply said, “Oh.” It was the sound of someone who suddenly realized that just a little more waiting would have been the difference between feeling free and actually being free.

Don’t give up now. Not when you’re so much closer to a gracious God who is rising to show you compassion and to bring you justice. It won’t be much longer before you’ll hear him calling your name.

Ummm.  He lost.  I know you know that, but I thought maybe I should say it again, since we don’t always do so well with these kinds of things, do we?  In fact, entire groups of Christians are still living with the blinds down and the lights out as they try to figure out where we go from here.  I don’t mean to make fun, but I do find it amusing how many people who have been brought into an unshakeable kingdom with an unshakeable King can find themselves so shaken by events that take place in a shakeable world that is just a temporary home.

And so now, days after the next great plan for America failed, many sit with their heads in their hands asking a very simple question: “Now what?”

I have a very simple answer: follow Jesus.

Romney and the Republican party (or, for that matter, Obama and the Democrats) are not, were not, and never could have been the answer for what this great country needs, and the minute we start to believe that lie is the minute we cease to walk with the power that we have received from another kingdom.  Make sure you read this next statement until you really get it: nothing that is real, nothing that matters most, has changed since the electoral count topped 270 in blue late in the evening of November 6, 2012.  If you are a follower of Jesus, then your King was never up for re-election, and no vote count in this place can ever shake his kingdom.

And so we simply carry on, and if we’ve been living our lives as true followers of Jesus, then the answer to “now what?” is as simple as “keep doing what you’ve been doing.”

Have you ever had someone ask you what you would do if you knew today was your last day to live?  Most of the time people respond with a routine that is far from their normal one, don’t they?

“I’d call my son whom I haven’t spoken to in years.”

“I’d quit my job.”

“I’d spend time with my family.”

“I’d make things right with my Maker.”

But here’s an answer you don’t hear nearly as often as you probably should: “I’d just do what I do all the time already.”  Doesn’t that answer make a lot more sense, though?  Shouldn’t we already be doing the things that matter the most so much that a major external shaking wouldn’t really change things?

See, if you’re truly a disciple of Christ, it means that you’re already talking with him, reading his words, and spending time on a regular basis with others who are doing the same.  And it means that, even after such a disappointing result in our recent election, when it comes to the things that are the most important, our response is to simply do them even more.

Pray more.  Not for the “wrong” voters to get straightened out, but for the Jesus-followers to “become blameless and pure, children of God without fault in a crooked and depraved generation, in which you shine like stars in the universe as you hold out the word of life.” (Philippians 2:15-16)

Read more.  Know the truth of the Bible so well that you will be able to “let you conversation always be full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.” (Colossians 4:6)

Fellowship more.  This is so much more than eating potluck dinners once or twice a year!  This is spending time with other followers of Jesus away from the one hour service on Sunday.  This is about sharing life together and serving others together on the other six days of the week in such a way that your light will “shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your father in heaven.” (Matthew 5:16)

Church, this is our time, not to rule, but to serve a country in desperate need of the grace we have been made carriers of.

Now what?  Now, we shine!