Happy New Year!
Does anything say new beginnings better than a birth? Even our cultural celebration of New Year’s Eve and Day represents the New Year in the form of a baby taking over for the aging Father Time. I, for one, am profoundly struck by the celebration of beginnings right in the middle of the Christmas season. It there is a new beginning worth celebrating, it has to be the one that took place in Bethlehem over 2000 years ago.
The prophet Isaiah declared God’s intention to do something fresh, to initiate a new beginning, “See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland.” (Isaiah 43:19) Certainly that vision finds its high point with the Christ Child in the manger, but it also reveals something of the heart and plan of God in our lives. God did an amazing new thing when Jesus entered the world, and he continues to do amazing, new things as Jesus enters us in our world.
God has a plan for us, and a plan for the world. It is a good plan, and those who embrace it find life. Remember the words from Jeremiah, “ ‘For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.’” (Jeremiah 29:11) God’s plan for us is to see us embrace the future and hope that is destined for us, and live the lives we were made to live.
The beauty of God’s promise is that it is not reserved for a single day, but is truth for every day. Many people will make New Year’s resolutions today. Most will not follow through on them. There will be plans and visions claimed, but the twists and turns of life will distract, and is some cases destroy, those plans. Yet, God’s plan stands forever. God is not surprised by life, he is the Author of it. Heaven does not shake in fear of events or obstacles. The Lord of heaven and earth is more than able to make his will reality. God’s promise remains secure. This is a wonderful truth! There is nothing wrong with making plans and resolutions, but the greatest beginning is found in Jesus.
A good friend challenged her Facebook friends to remember that greater than New Year’s resolutions is the call to respond to the new life in Christ every day. The Apostle Paul wrote, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!” (2 Corinthians 5:17) Every day is a new beginning with God. Every moment is pregnant with opportunity to embrace God’s vision for our lives and for the world. What God began in Bethlehem, is continuing today. Jesus is God with us, and, “of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end.” (Isaiah 9:7)
Happy New Year! I pray we make amazing plans and resolutions. I also pray that every day we embrace the promise and vision of God, to be members of God’s great family, and a part of God’s great plan for the world. Today is a day of new beginnings!
