New Year – New Life

WTW 2022
1 January
New Life Perspective

The Seventh Day Since Christ’s Birth:
A Brother’s New Year Perspective

Did you know (my church calendar friends will know) that today is the seventh day of Christmas?

It’s interesting how quickly the glow of the holiday season fades. The trees are put away or thrown out. The music reverts back to whatever typical fare (mostly garbage) on the radio, and then we prepare for a new year. The climax of the year is over, time to start a new one. That’s the sense we get.

What is lost in the shuffle? In the mad dash to get presents wrapped, to have parties and celebrate the ending of one year and the beginning of another? It’s the same thing missing from most of our holiday movies, missing from the midnight celebrations inaugurating a new year. Purpose. Clear defined purpose. Meaning for it all. Are we just stuck in an endless cycle of years, where we hope each is better than the last, only to find that our celebrations are a fleeting moment of happiness, a flash of joy to then be forgotten for the next exciting event? It doesn’t matter what event it is. Birthday, Valentine’s Day, something, anything to fight off the looming question of meaning. The issue confronts us every moment of every day. Why does this matter? What is the point?

The problem is that in all our celebrations, we are not celebrating the concrete, the real, the lasting. We celebrate brief ideas. Today it is newness. A few days ago it was that vague ideal of “Christmas spirit,” or peace on earth, goodwill towards men. Soon it will be Valentine’s Day, where we celebrate love. Every holiday takes on a vague, vaporous meaning. We celebrate sweet little nothings. Concepts that may make us feel warm inside-or miserable depending on how your year is going.

But with Christmas, we have a hint of what could be. The stark weighty reality that could undergird every bit of our celebrations and bring meaning to the days in between.

Christianity isn’t some vague religion filled with high ideals and concepts (though it contains such, that is true), it is built on concrete historical facts. Christmas is the celebration of a birth. Births are messy, bloody things. They aren’t cheery, saccharine affairs. They are raw painful events that demand everything from a mother giving birth to new life. And then once the baby is born there is joy, there is hope, there is love. But these are rooted in what is real, a newborn baby. Christmas is that sort of thing. It is rooted in the real, in the birth of a baby. Yet not just any baby, a baby who is God in the flesh, one that is the center of all history, a King whose government will continually increase and have no end.

Our culture wants to run away from such a story as fast as it can. Make Christmas about goodwill and cheer. Make it about getting presents and being good little boys and girls. Anything but Jesus! Focus on other religious holidays, but don’t mention the Savior that built western civilization. Don’t mention the One whose kingdom will have no end.

But here’s the sad part. As our society has tried to destroy every tie to Jesus in its public life, it has found itself soulless and meaningless. Forced to celebrate concepts and ideas. But concepts don’t give new life. A concept isn’t the same as a messy newborn. The concept of love is not the same as a husband and wife clinging to one another in a world bent on destroying their marriage. The concept of newness isn’t the same as lasting change, finding meaning and purpose in more than just losing weight, making money, taking up a new hobby, making a new resolution.

We are a culture that will celebrate love, peace, and newness while actually practicing rampant sexual deviancy, broken promises, divorce, and violence. Year after year this does not change. And it will not this year, no matter how many resolutions we make, no matter what we promise to do differently. Nothing will change unless we come to a place where we stop running. Stop pretending that we can create our own purpose and meaning.

Until the rebellion in our hearts is quelled, there can be no peace on earth. Until we receive the grace of God revealed to us in the crucified and risen Savior, Jesus Christ, we will never know true goodwill toward the men and women around us. Until we yield up our lives so that the Spirit produces His fruit in us rather than us trying to change ourselves by our own resolutions, we will not know newness of life.

Ask yourself, what am I celebrating tonight? What have I been celebrating? Is it concrete? Is it lasting? Does it have purpose and meaning? Or will it be a single vaporous moment that is swept away with the passing of time? Solomon understood this. Vapor, he once wrote, all is vapor. Whatever meaning you may think you’ve created is meaningless before the face of time. Everything will be for nothing if all we have is for this life alone.

But if…if there is a time beyond this one, a life to come, a resurrection of the body, a renewal of heaven and earth. If there is a promise of a coming new creation that you can participate in, that you can taste even now, would you not wish to know about it?

Your hope and my hope are found in the bloody and messy event that we recently celebrated (and still do for those of us who follow the church calendar). The Birth of Jesus Christ. It is found in Jesus Himself, who stands at the center of history, grounding us in an eternal purpose. So then our celebrations become filled with meaning and anticipation. We are not part of a story about simple self-discovery, as if we were the protagonists, but a story that revolves around an eternal King. There is someone greater than ourselves to live for, One who imbues every new year with fresh possibilities, who breaks us out of a running-in-circles view of existence. All will be summed up in Him and His reign.

Tonight, as you welcome a new year, as you make resolutions and promises, may God open your eyes to see the ultimate meaning of it all. May He help you see that there is so much more than this moment, this new year. There is a newness of life that He can give you. Simply repent and trust in Jesus Christ.

And for those who already know that newness of life, but have found their days burdened, their souls wearied with the happenings of life, meditate on this verse with me.

“In returning and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and in trust shall be your strength.” (Isaiah 30:15)

Remember the reason you exist. Remember the purpose you have in Christ. Live that way.

Finally, may you each have a Happy New Year!

– eyn