“So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!” 2 Corinthians 5:17
Do you ever stop and think about why we celebrate New Year’s Day? Afterall, it’s really just another day, so why is it so important for people to mark a date change on a calendar?
I would guess it’s because a new year offers a new beginning, the chance to start fresh. There’s a reason January is the most important month of the year for gyms and diet programs because it seems like a fresh chance to start again and improve yourself. It seems like a natural time for beginning something, which is why I think lots of people make New Year’s resolutions (whether they stick to them or not is another story).
The Christian life offers lots of opportunities for fresh starts, for changing what we’ve been doing or beginning to live differently. In worship, we regularly begin with a time of confession where we admit what we’ve done wrong. We admit to God and to each other that our lives aren’t perfect, that we’re not living the way we should live, that we’re doing things we shouldn’t do and failing to do things we should do.
Then, immediately after confession, we hear God’s response. We hear the good news that because of God’s forgiveness, because God loves us, we all get a fresh start. The slate is wiped clean. We don’t need to carry the weight of our sins or guilt with us anymore. We are forgiven!
And then we run into the next week (or maybe just the next day…or the next couple of minutes) and it doesn’t take long before we stumble again. It doesn’t take long for us to forget about what God has done for us. We take the burden that Jesus has taken from us, and we pick it back up and start trying to carry the weight of our own faults and failings again. But we always have another opportunity to remember God’s love because God never gets tired of forgiving us!
News flash…we don’t have to wait for a new year to have a fresh start. Each day offers us the opportunity to wake up and remember that we are a child of God. We have been claimed, redeemed, forgiven, and set free by Jesus Christ.
Today we have the opportunity to say goodbye to the old and welcome in the new. Today we have the chance to start over again and begin to live a new life in Christ. With this in mind, I pray that your resolutions and mine will all lead toward the peace and joy on earth that we celebrate in the birth of Jesus at Christmas. And perhaps our new beginning can start with learning more about God’s grace and love for us, and then sharing that love with one another.
Blessings on all your new beginnings!
~Pastor Tony
