It is now two thousand seventeen… another year, another beginning, another point of change. Like the beginning of every calendar year people are looking to make adjustments to life. One may want to lose weight while another may want to spend more time reading. No matter the desired transformation, most look at the beginning of a year with hopeful expectations. Christians jump on the bandwagon by resolving to do ‘spiritual’ things better. Whether it is to read the bible through in one year or to keep a prayer journal daily, one vows to live the year closer to God than last.
The problem
lies in that the resolve of both the unbeliever and believer alike miss the
beauty of new beginnings. As those who
live in linear time, we have the tendency to compare what to come to what has
come. We look to the past and want to live
in a world that is just a little better than before. This view is limiting. It allows us to only see the next and not the
eternal. It is shortsighted and fails to
appreciate the power of God!
In the forty-third
chapter of Isaiah, the nation of Israel is reminded that God was, is, and will
always be its only salvation. Unlike the
surrounding nations or the nation itself, God was not one whose power had come
and gone. He was not one whose influence
was on the rise or whose prominence was in its twilight. He is the great I Am! One with such sureness that He declares
through the prophet, “Remember not the former things, nor consider the things
of old. Behold, I am doing a new thing; now
it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and
rivers in the desert.”
As a Christian,
it is my prayer that I and those who call themselves like-minded, begin this
year with a sight to the eternal and with God sized expectations! As Christians, let us resolve not to have a
year better than the last one but let us pray to see a year that only God could
have fashioned!