New Beginnings

No. 64 - 31st December 2017

A new year is about to begin. The past is behind me, and the future lies ahead. All my failures and successes are a part of last year, and a whole new future is opening up. So, I can build on my successes or drown in a morbid regret for the past, dragging it around with me like a ball and chain round my ankle. The choice is mine.

The message of Christmas was that God is making all things new. He has entered our world as a human being to bridge that gulf that has opened up between us and Him. The Bible says, “Look, God’s home is now among his people! He will live with them, and they will be his people. God himself will be with them”. This New Year, I want to live my life with a conscious awareness of His presence. Does that sound far fetched or restrictive? I don’t think it is. God isn’t trying to crush my personality or make me less of a person. It’s quite the opposite. There’s a Psalm that most people have heard at one time or another. The author used to be a shepherd boy and thinks of himself as one of the sheep in God’s flock. “The LORD is my shepherd, I lack nothing. He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters, he refreshes my soul. He guides me along the right paths for his name’s sake. Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.”

C.S. Lewis, an Oxford professor, but perhaps best known as the author of the Narnia books, had this to say. “The more we let God take us over, the more truly ourselves we become – because He made us. He invented us. He invented all the different people that you and I were intended to be. . . It is when I turn to Christ, when I give up myself to His personality, that I first begin to have a real personality of my own.” Well, that’s what I want. I want to go into this New Year with a determination to leave the past behind and to move forward into whatever God has for me in the future. Have a very happy New Year.