A New Year?
If you know me a bit it will not surprise you that I am not a celebrator of the new year. I usually turn-in at my normal time. There was a time in younger years when I would invite family and friends over to play board games (remember them?). Since no one had to go to work the next day we would be able to play those games that take hours and hours to play. Can you hear your boss when you tell him you were late because you stayed up all night playing Risk? Those gatherings were never about the end of one year and the beginning of the next. That juncture between the two is quite arbitrary and the only thing that is really affected is taxes. Everything else in our lives start and end on different days. The new congress begins on January third, the presidential term begins on January 20th, the church year begins on the First Sunday of Advent (usually the first Sunday after Thanksgiving), and we celebrate birthdays and anniversaries throughout the year. Would it not be more appropriate and truly feel like a new year if we celebrated on the Spring Equinox when the weather was warming and things began to sprout and grow? Although, that too, would be arbitrary. Time itself is arbitrary. You have experienced that, there are those times when you are enjoying yourself which go too quickly and those times when it drags on as you wait for some dreaded news or when the task at hand is boring.
My father used to joke that God created time so that everything did not happen at once. But, whatever it is it is not fair. Time treats individuals differently. Just scan the obituaries and you will see this. Right beside those who are in their nineties are others in their thirties or younger. Who has not looked into heaven and pondered how short life is in the vast plan of God? Who has not expressed the sentiment of the psalmist (90):
10 The span of our life is seventy years, perhaps in strength even eighty.
yet the sum of them is but labor and sorrow, for they pass away quickly and we are gone.
With a spate of funerals since Thanksgiving (five) I have been pondering these words much lately. Our lives certainly are not our own. They are the gift of God who has made us and all there is. In the coming weeks as you start thinking about filling out your tax forms or your new resolutions remember the place that God holds. You do not owe God taxes or anything. Instead God calls you to live out your life however long or short it may be in love. Love for oneself, love for others, and love for God. A life lived in love is a life well lived. Then, surrounded by God’s love bought for us by Jesus we can answer our pondering as the psalmist did:
14 Satisfy us by your loving kindness in the morning;
so shall we rejoice and be glad all the days of our life.
15 Make us glad by the measure of the days that you afflicted us
and the years in which we suffered adversity.
16 Show your servants your works
and your splendor to their children.
17 May the graciousness of the LORD our God be upon us;
prosper the work of our hands; prosper our handiwork.
May God prosper the works of you hands this year and keep you in his grace. May Jesus walk with you this year guiding you and may the Holy Spirit inspire you to live a life worthy of the gift God has given you.