For some, there's no emotions about New Year's. Some are plain old numb about it. Maybe it's been a moot thing for you for as long as you can remember, and you just want the hullabaloo to pass so normal life can get back into swing. Or maybe you've just recently become disenfranchised with all the fuss made about such things as nostalgia, commiseration, catharsis, and resolutions.
Or maybe the pain of something that's hovering over your life like the deep darkness of these winter nights, that comes too early and lingers too late, is what's got you numb towards New Year's Eve this year. You just can't shed the dragging heft of this ugly weight in your life, and a calendar flip can't change squat about that. So what's the point? It's another day. So what? Working in retail as I do currently sure brings to light how many people might be, or admittedly are, living that way, as they have no issue spending all their time in a furniture store on a holiday, whether as a customer or employee, or have no special plans to do anything at home with family or friends.
My friend, I can't account for all that you may be feeling as we sit at the doorstep of another year. I can't be sure exactly what might be cheapening the potential value of another New Year.
But as I found myself thinking about this concept of "newness," I realized that it's all about the making.
Nothing can be new unless it's made new.
One of the most powerfully moving scenes in the 2004 film "The Passion of the Christ" was when Jesus, played by Jim Caviezel, took another of his nasty spills while struggling to carry his cross out of the city of Jerusalem and up to the crucifixion site on Golgotha. At this particular moment of the movie, the anxiety of Christ's path with the burden of the cross upon him, mixed with surging sorrowful music that mimicked the anguish of those around him who loved and followed him, mounted with Jesus' mother, Mary, running to his side after trying to work through the crowds to reach him.
There, joining him for a heart-wrenching moment on her knees, as her son, the Son of God, panted for his labored breath and peered over to her with blood running all over his face, she tried to console him, and her motherly heart broke for him in his pain.
Jesus, though, despite his suffering and fatigue, still had his mind set on the purpose of all of it, and showed that he still believed in what he was about to accomplish. He took her face in a bloody hand, gently pointed it towards his so she was close enough to hear his chortled words, and uttered,
"Behold, mother, I make all things new..."
Tonight my point is very simply this:
Jesus Christ is the one who makes this year new, and makes you new too.
"But I'm broken. I haven't felt whole inside in so long," you say.
Doesn't matter. Christ makes you new.
"But this relationship is strained to the point of breaking, and I have no fight left in me to work on fixing it."
Doesn't matter. Christ makes you and your relationships new.
"But this addiction I've battled for years just won't let me go. It's got a grip so tight on me that I can't imagine being free."
Doesn't matter. Christ makes you and your behavior new.
"But I'm so lonesome and feel like I have no one to love me."
"But I'm broke and sick of feeling like a failure."
"But I'm afraid of what my illness, my cancer, my condition, my chronic pain will bring in the days to come."
"But I just doubt that anything good is ever going to truly happen to me."
"But I am numb, and done with trying."
Doesn't matter.
Christ has made all things new.
It didn't look very promising in that dire moment when Christ was on his knees, bleeding, aching, sore from beatings, dirty and spit upon, and mentally taxed from all the hateful mocking of his opponents. He knew that death awaited him. But he rose from the ground and got back to his feet, shrugged the cross back onto the peak of his shoulder, and carried forward to that crucifixion site. There, even though his death sentence was carried out, the bitterness and ugliness of an apparent defeat was the victory mankind needed.
It was a victory YOU and I needed. It made us new. It made everything new and changed everything forever.
Your newness is not a cape to throw on whenever you feel triumphant enough to play the superhero in life. It's not a badge to wear proudly emblazoned on your chest when you have a day of proud accomplishment. It's not something you can take off and put back on - it's a part of you.
Even in whatever feels ugly, disappointing, heartbreaking, maddening, or despicable in your life or in your very self, there is a newness that was MADE...made by Jesus on that day he died for you. That newness was assigned to you by his mercy, and whatever things that are weighing on you now as you contemplate another new year cannot erase that from within you.
I wish for hope for you, my friend. Don't see the darkness. It's a disguise, no matter how real or convincing. The darkness of the world, and our lives that are affected daily by sin, is a shroud that only just barely hides the light beneath. That's temporary. Christ has promised to come back again one day, and take all those who belong to him home to enjoy Paradise, and leave this shroud of darkness and numbness behind.
Wait on that day, and let that hope and expectation color over the gloom and numbness that sits in your heart.
You are new. You may not feel it in this moment, but I pray you will realize it again and grab onto its sturdy truth like a bold hiking staff that will help you climb life's mountains.
2015 may not look like much as it approaches. But remember, the night is always deepest and darkest before the dawn. The light is coming. It's a light of hope, and it cannot be contained.
It's the light of newness, and it springs from your soul. It was made by someone, to live inside you, and that someone is the Lord, Jesus Christ.
May your New Year be truly joyful, because of salvation and a home waiting in Heaven, regardless of how happy you are tonight.
It's a New Year.....and a new you.
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