Making a Fresh Start

‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”

He who was seated on the throne said, “I am making everything new!” 

--Revelation 21: 4-5a

Time is a kind of arbitrary thing. I mean, in Genesis, God gave us evening and morning—a new day—but months and years, holidays and holy days, overall, are human choices and creations. It seems easier, somehow, to handle Life in smaller pieces. So we divide our days into hours and minutes, and our lives into years. Three hundred sixty-five days seems to be a manageable chunk, and once a year is a good time to stop and check up on how our lives are coming along. And it has been this way for a long, long time.

In the nineteenth century in this country, for slaveholders the New Year meant a time for assessing one’s debts and taking appropriate actions to collect or to pay. If a slaveholder had a debt to settle, he might choose to sell off a slave or two. And because slaves had no rights, and were considered just property, it was not unusual for families to be separated. Teenage children might go to one plantation, their parents, to another.

Each year on New Year’s Eve, slave families would gather in their churches, hold hands and pray, anxiously awaiting word of whether their family would remain intact or be divided, with no guarantee they would ever see one another again.

So you can understand why New Year’s Eve in 1862 was such a big deal. After decades of approaching the New Year in fear and dread, the Emancipation Proclamation offered hope. A fresh start. A chance to be together again with family long-departed.

It sounds a little like heaven on earth, doesn’t it? Freedom from the past, reunited with loved ones—a fresh start all around. And this is just the promise we find in this passage from Revelation. No more tears. No more pain. The old order of things has passed away. All things have been made new.

And Revelation also offers this promise. Now the dwelling of God is with all people, and God will live with them. In other words, heaven isn’t simply some place “out there,” where the saints hang out after we die. Heaven is not a noun. Heaven is an adjective, a quality, a way of living life here and now.

Over and over in Scripture, God has promised to make all things new. Every time the world seems to be nearing the end—at the tomb, for instance—every time, something new, greater and more holy emerges.

The old has passed away. The new has come.

So here we are again, on the brink of another new year. Our calendar year is arbitrary, to be sure; nevertheless, now is a great time to pause and reflect on the last twelve months. And it’s a perfect time to decide what, from 2013, we will choose to let go of and leave behind. Here are a few suggestions:

 --Give yourself permission to be happy.

 --Give yourself permission—to be you.

 --Practice forgiveness. (Start with yourself.) You can forgive another person without telling a soul, and when you do, you set your soul free.

 --Let go of feeling guilty about things you cannot change.

-- Let go of your fear of the unknown. Take one step at a time and watch the path unfold.

 --Let go of worrying about the future. It only robs you of fully enjoying today.

-- Let go of negative self-talk. Listen instead to the voice of the Almighty, deep in your soul. You are my beloved child, and that is enough.

That old beer commercial got it right, you know? We only go around once in this life. What we do with our days and our years is up to us.

 We can cast our eyes backward, live our days in regrets and “if only’s.”

 We can take the very long, eternal view and focus on Someday, when we will be reunited with our Creator and our loved ones in the sweet by-and-by.

 Or we can choose, every day, to live into the promise of the Gospel, the promise that God comes and dwells among us. And then—we can set about making that promise a reality, bringing heaven on earth as we love one another, shoulder one another’s burdens, and allow ourselves to accept the gift of God’s generous grace.

It’s a new year, 2014. What will you let go of? What will you embrace? Where will you allow the Holy Spirit to make things new in your life?

Holy, gracious Lord, help us to see ourselves through your all-loving eyes, to offer that same love to ourselves and to others, and to begin this New Year dependent on and believing in your perfect promises. Amen.