“My cup runneth over,” that is the way that the King James Version states a line in Psalm 23. Another translation says, “my cup overflows.” This overflow is a reality of our Christian faith. We recognize that we don’t just receive what we need, but that our cups are filled to overflowing – we have more than what we need. God gives us more grace than we can handle – every sin forgiven, plus the Holy Spirit in our lives encouraging us to live into our Baptisms with holy lives. This is overflow.

You’re going to be hearing a lot about “overflow” in the next year, because it is the title of our Annual Focus that will begin this Sunday. This annual focus will mean that we will be equipping you as University Lutherans to see how God is filling your cup to overflow, and then directing you to be generous with this grace that God has given you. Once we recognize all that God has given us, we can’t help but see how much more He has given us that we really need. God doesn’t just show up with gifts for us, He shows up with gifts enough that we can share them with our friends.

This year we will look for several ways to resource you as University Lutherans to see this overflow. Two of the ways that we are planning right now are: 1. The Overflow Moment, 2. The Pour Over.

The Overflow Moment will be a weekly addition to our announcements that will encourage you to see God’s grace in your life and possibly to share it with someone around you. For those of you that were with us a few years ago, you might recognize this as being similar to the “Red Letter Challenge” from the “Jesus Centered Community” annual focus. The purpose over the moment is to give you ideas of how to live out your Baptisms in your everyday lives. It will be a weekly challenge to live into the grace that God has given you.

The Pour Over will also bring back something from the “Jesus Centered Community” era. We will be putting together a podcast that will engage with some text: it might be a Bible verse, it might be something from the early church, it might be something written just a few years ago – whatever it is, we will share this with you and talk about how it shows God’s overflowing grace in your life. We are hoping this will be a “conversation podcast” and so we are looking for people from within and outside of University Lutheran’s community to join us. If you’re interested, make sure Pastor Jay is aware.

As we enter into this new Annual Focus, we pray that God will indeed show us the overflowing grace that He has given us so that we may share that grace with the people around us in manifest ways.