New 2014 [My Story]

My heart overflows, my mind races, my fingers can’t keep up. There is so much I want to say at this moment, but I have to first deal with the big speed bump that keeps everything else unsteady… New Year’s Eve.

If you’re on any social media right now, I don’t need to tell you it’s flooded with ‘out with the old, in with the new’ and the like. I read of past regrets and future hope. Of life anew and life that’s gone.  But this one facebook status scrolled through with the masses and really caused me pause: “New Year to me means FREEDOM.”

Out with the old.  In with the new. Out with the bondage. In with the freedom.  Really? Does that even sound right, because that IS what the conglomeration of the rolling statuses are saying.   Goodness. What a trap we bind ourselves in with these thoughts-with these beliefs.

Freedom with “New” is easy to understand.  A fresh start- I get that.  But freedom because the clock ticks midnight and the calendar changes? With that would also come some crux of crossover as new melds with old, the pages of the calendar flip to next, and, once again, freedom is overcome with bondage.  An endless  and futile cycle.

The other outlooks aren’t too promising either-peek at them with me: rich, thin, healthy, good, bad, control, happy…these things we wish for next year are the same we found ourselves uttering as the last ball dropped in NYC. Again we say, out with the old, in with the new. Freedom.  Who wants to live with finding freedom from the past on each December 31st knowing that hope turns to despair as the year unfolds leaving us in the same spot 365 days later?  Is there a way to end this turnabout?

We’re tarnished in our thinking. New. Old. Beginning. Freedom. We can’t think like God does.

God has a plan. A plan to pardon all that weighs us down and a plan to give us life abundantly and endlessly.

Isiaha 55:8 For My thoughts are not your thoughts, and your ways are not My ways.

He can make old new and offer us freedom that truly frees us…forever.

The beginning was a long, long time ago.

My spunky and beloved mother in law’s birthday is today. She was born in 1915: 98 years ago.  It is also her 4th birthday celebration in heaven after her home-going just a few short years ago. (Where has that time gone?)  You sure learn a lot by living with someone who has that much life experience. Such a wealth of wisdom.  Yet,even for her, the  beginning wasn’t just shy of 100 years prior.

“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”  Genesis 1:1

…and the stroke of midnight on any given night, nor the first of January…. that’s not the beginning.  It’s the start of our calendar year, but it’s not the beginning.  It’s the new year in and the old year out, but that’s only good for the moment, for the one second in time that it’s true. If we live to be 100, we’ve got 100 seconds of old becomes new. That’s not much to bank on, but again, our minds are clouded with ‘ordinary.’  I’m thankful that God’s ways are far from ordinary. What a mess we’d be in without him. An entire life  and only seconds of freedom as the clock ticks out with the old and in with the new, out with the old and in with the new, out with the old and in with the new for each New Year’s Eve we’re given in this life.  Not much hope there.

There IS hope. There IS a way to for old to be gone and new to outlast the calendar.

“Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.” 2 Corinthians 5:17

Borrowed from Matthew’s commentary, I love what he says about the one who finds Christ: “Though the same as a man, he is changed in his character and conduct. These words must and do mean more than an outward reformation. The man who formerly saw no beauty in the Savior that he should desire him, now loves him above all things.”

That’s me. That’s what the Lord has done in my life. New. Truly, out with the old and in with the new. No calendar, no crystal  ball dropping down on New Year’s Eve, but a truly transformed me by the Lord’s grace and through Christ.  Now, that’s freedom!

“I am using an example from everyday life because of your human limitations. Just as you used to offer yourselves as slaves to impurity and to ever-increasing wickedness, so now offer yourselves as slaves to righteousness leading to holiness. …But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness, and the result is eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Romans 6:19

And at the end of the year sitting in my living room watching NYC come to life with celebratory hope for the year anew, I can say-even in the face of the hardest of years, I can humbly and thankfully proclaim the truth:

“Many, O LORD my God, are the wonders which You have done, And Your thoughts toward us; There is none to compare with You. If I would declare and speak of them, They would be too numerous to count.”  Psalm 40:5

This new year, 2014, I pray that you too know the truth of real hope, know the relief of really being able to say out with the old and in with the new, and know the personal experience of true freedom  as found only in Christ.

Happy New Year!