New Life's Eve

Take a look at many of today’s headlines: “Top 10 Scandals of 2009”, “The Years Dumbest Criminals”, “Most Influential Woman of 2009”, “Best Songs of 2009”, “Top 10 Best Athletes of 2009” and most other articles take a reflective and evaluative look at the past 365 days. 2009 was a challenging year with world economic depression, wars, terrorism and instability. Yet, New Year’s Eve is celebrated by most of the world with a sense of hope and optimism through spectacular fireworks, events, and parties. On this day we experience both a reflective realism of the past and a pre-emptive celebration of hope for our future.

This is an interesting dynamic of our consciousness. If we live in the negative realism of our past we succumb to debilitating pessimism. If we only soar in the heights of what may be, we fail to grasp the work of supporting hope. A healthy balance of realism and dreams, reflection and vision, past and future are necessary and reflect both a time of mourning and birth.

I think we have a personal New Year’s Eve on the moment before we invited Christ into our lives. The Holy Spirit brings us to a point of crisis where we reflect upon the realism of our past (sin and separation from God), and leads us to the hope of our future in Christ’s redeeming power. Let’s call it our New Life’s Eve. On our New Life’s Day (that moment we accepted Jesus Christ into our lives and received his gift of love and forgiveness) we experience the 1st day of our New Life. A few examples are when Jesus teaches Nicodemus about being born again, not of flesh, but of the spirit. The Prophet Ezekiel refers to having a new heart and new spirit, and the Apostle Paul states in his letters to the churches of being dead to sin, alive in Christ, a new creation, a new man and having a new life.

Today on Dec. 31st, I hope you will take a moment to reflect upon your New Life’s Day. If all you have is the headlines of your past “Top 10 Disasters of the Year”, without the living hope of Christ in your future, you are missing out on the most important day of celebration, victory, peace and joy we can ever experience.

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, - 1 Peter 1:3