I’m not someone who makes a big deal of New Years Day or New Year resolutions. We don’t stay up to watch the ball drop. I tend to think of Advent and Christmas season as my new year. Advent is a season of reflection on the past and preparation for the new. For it is Christ who brings the new.
I know what it is like to be made over or made new. I am not the person I once was; conceited, prideful, self-centered. Not to say that I don’t still have those moments. Everyone does. But when I turned myself over to Christ, he began to re-make me into his image. Paul spoke of it: 2 Corinthians 5:17 NIV 17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come:[a] The old has gone, the new is here!
God promised this long ago through the prophet Isaiah. God would not leave us or his creation broken and lost, yearning for what we didn’t even know we were missing. Isaiah 43:18-19 NIV18 “Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. 19 See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.
I still remember that old person that I used to be, but I don’t recognize her. Because I’m different… I don’t think the same or have the same attitudes. Many of the old things are no longer desirable. The closer I come to Christ, the further away that old me goes. As the saying goes, “God loves us too much to leave us where we are.” Have you turned over your heart and soul to God for renovation and re-creation?
We purchased and moved into an older house when I retired. We’ve spent the last two years fixing things that were wrong and renovating to make it what we want. And not one thing has been a straightforward job. Every single thing we have worked on has turned out to require way more work than anticipated. Each thing requires one or more other things to be done beyond the initial problem. It’s like that with our hearts and minds and our world as well. But God doesn’t quit. He works on each piece, fixing and making it new. We become a “new thing.”
Isaiah 65:16-18 NIV17 “See, I will create new heavens and a new earth. The former things will not be remembered, nor will they come to mind.18 But be glad and rejoice forever in what I will create. Believing what Christ had told them, the disciple, Peter wrote: (2 Peter 3:12-14 NIV)“13 But in keeping with his promise we are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, where righteousness dwells.
We are living right now in a new world due to the Covid 19 pandemic. I don’t think things will ever go back to the way they were. New ways of doing things have been discovered and implemented. Many new innovations work too well to go back to the old ways. We have all had to adapt to new things. We know that this situation will gradually get better, at least we hope so. But even if it doesn’t, we have God’s promise of new life, a new world, a new heaven and earth. When, we don’t know. But it will happen.
There’s a song from 1970 by the Mamas and the Papas called “New World Coming.” There’s a new world coming and it’s just around the bend. There’s a new world coming, this one’s coming to an end.
There’s a new voice calling, you can hear it if you try. And it’s growing stronger with each day that passes by.
There’s a brand new morning rising clear and sweet and free. There’s a new day dawning that belongs to you and me.
(Chorus) Yes, a new day’s dawning, the one we’ve had visions of coming in peace, coming in joy, coming in love. Source: Musixmatch Songwriters: Barry Mann / Cynthia Weil
Yes, I know that I’m dating myself. But God’s promises still hold. The things that we dreamed of in the 70’s we dream of still, probably even more so. Despite all, God is doing a new thing. Let him do it in you.
