Happy New Year! Or is it really a new one? The Chinese celebrate a new year on an entirely different date, as do the traditional Jewish people. Is today a lot different from December 31, 2022? Did you get up on the same side of bed? Have your same coffee and rush off to church? Oh, I DO hope you did start off your week assembling with the body of Christ, as we should be doing every first day of the week (Hebrews 10:25).
Even in the garden, some of the “new” plants are really just an extension of the old. Those cascades of pink roses on the front porch are simply cuttings rooted from a plant in Evelyn’s yard. And seeds! What are they but a continuation of last year’s plants? Is there really anything new? Okay, it is nice every spring to have fresh “new” little plants full of promise.
Maybe there are some resolutions you have made, taking the occasion of the “new year” as motivation to do things better. That’s good. I wish I could be more motivated every day to do things better. But in all honesty, any day would be just as good of a motivation to change things, to become closer to God and to His expectation of us.
None of us are promised a tomorrow. I myself was busily cooking and planning for an upcoming VBS one evening in Iowa back in 1983, and by morning all my vital signs had ceased. After I was revived, Luke 12:20 came to mind. “But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your soul is required of you; and now who will own what you have prepared?’”
It certainly changed my perspective on the fleeting nature of life itself, and on what was important.
Look at my poor garden. No, don’t! It’s awful. We’ve had several days of single-digit cold, and that’s in Fahrenheit measurements! Our usually hardy Southern perennials are going to be severely frost-damaged at best, and we will surely lose many plants that could not withstand the swift temperature drop and the prolonged cold.
The pansies that always enthralled me in the winter as a Northern-born transplant are wilted and mushy. Well, there was no guarantee that they would live through this winter as they did through so many others. Will I plant new ones in a non-traditional time, maybe in March? Maybe…just as you may make some resolutions in March, or June, or September.
We will have to renew our gardens after this mess. Our lives are no different. It doesn’t take a full year to completely mess up, so renewal has to happen a lot more often than all the January firsts in our lives.
“For He says,
‘At the acceptable time I listened to you,
And on the day of salvation I helped you.’
Behold, now is ‘the acceptable time,’ behold, now is ‘the day of salvation’”
(2 Corinthians 6:2, NASB).
This verse may not have been written on January 1. Today, any day, any hour, can be a time of resolution and renewal.
“Brothers and sisters, I do not regard myself as having taken hold of it yet; but one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. Therefore, all who are mature, let’s have this attitude” (Philippians 3:13-15a).