New starts, new songs and a new life are all part of our faith life. It is good for us to track the months, seasons and years of our life so that we can leave one episode
behind us and look forward to something new.
Granted, many of the resolutions we make go by the wayside quickly as
the year progresses, but the new date we write still provides an opening for us
to reconsider our lives and accept surprises, opportunities and a chance to
experience a new chapter.
“See, the former things have come to
pass, and new things I now declare,” (says Isaiah 42:9) as the prophet prepared
an exiled people to return to their homeland.
A musical poet writes: “O sing to the Lord a new song; sing to the Lord,
all the earth” (Psalm 96:1). Paul says that we have been given “the new
life of the Spirit” (Romans 7:6), that we are a “new creation” in Christ (2
Corinthians 5:17) and that we, combined with others, are a “new humanity” in
Christ (Ephesians 2:15-16).
This year is fresh, crisp, clean and full
of potential for the Spirit of God to work.
It is not necessary for us to expect old patterns to obstruct the
goodness of God, or to give in to cynicism, bitterness, or the dead ends of
last year.
Substantial changes—the new so often
mentioned in scripture—rarely happen instantaneously. The best changes are God initiated; however,
human beings need to cooperate. The
exiled and then freed people of Israel
had to get up and move from Babylon to Jerusalem. Singing a new song requires new lyrics and
often a new tune. Accepting new life in
Christ involves a whole new set of behaviors.
In each case people accept something they cannot make happen themselves,
yet must cooperatively change to do different things. While accepting “the new life of the Spirit”
is full of surprises, it still requires change on our part.
That the date has changed isn’t a
guarantee everything else will. But
simply approaching the day as new is a perspective that opens us to the
possibility that God is up to something and it would be a good idea for us to
notice, then get involved with it.
Welcome to the New Year!
Peace, Pastor David
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