Turning the Page

While I’m not much on New Year’s resolutions because I think they often set us up for disappointment, I do appreciate New Year’s day and turning the page of the calendar from one year to the next. There are seasons and rhythms to life, ebbs and flows, winters and summers, points and counterpoints. Often we are so obsessed with hours and minutes and seconds that we miss the themes and big pictures – and therefore the purposes and possibilities that God sets before us.

Living “in the moment” is not all we’re told it is in pop psychology – dogs live in the moment, and while I love dogs I am not a dog, I am a man created in the image of God and as a man I have the opportunity to enjoy perspective, to contemplate the present, the past, and the future – my puppies, no matter how much I love them, cannot ponder future possibilities, nor ask the “what ifs?” of the past, nor consider myriad options of the present. While we must train dogs “in the moment”; wise women and men know that people often receive their best training after the moment has past and they can reflect back on a decision, an action, an attitude.

People in a hurry generally get nowhere; in this we can learn from our dogs, for all dogs I have ever known eventually realize that the tail they are chasing is their own and at some point they stop going in circles – this cannot be said of us and our culture – we chase after things that we can never catch – “the pursuit of happiness” is a mirage that our Founding Fathers bequeathed to a self-indulgent people.

But to return to turning the page, there is something to be said for New Year’s, just as there is something to be said for sleep, for as sleep marks one day from the next, so the turning of the calendar page from December 31 to January 1 marks one year from another. We need both sleep and New Year’s. In Genesis 1:14 we read: “Then God said, ‘Let there be lights in the firmament of the heavens to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs and seasons, and for days and years.”

There may be things we can put behind us as we turn the page, there may be other things yet unfinished, and there are undoubtedly things ahead that are unanticipated. Our calendars for the new year all have events written on them with invisible ink – dates with unexpected joys, unexpected challenges, and perhaps with unexpected sorrows.

The world we live in would have us “live in the moment” and live in a materialistic frenzy with the result that we miss the signs and seasons of life, we miss pondering the purpose and meaning of life – and especially of our own lives. When we experience pain we are prescribed drugs or we drink alcohol to excess, when we feel deprived we are given plastic credit cards, when we want to deaden memories of the past or assuage fears of the future we numb our minds with mindless entertainments and activities. We are told that “He or she who dies with the most toys wins” and we don’t even ask, “Why would anyone want to play that game?”

Our kind heavenly Father knows our frailty, and just as He has given us rest in the true Sabbath, our Lord Jesus, so He gives us sleep, so He gives us seasons, and so He gives us new years.  May we all know that whatever the new year holds for us, that He holds the new year – and holding the new year, He also holds us, safe and secure in our Lord Jesus Christ.