OK, the calendar has turned and everyone is blathering about a fresh start. It is a new year and there's a good bit of history here, years of cultural conditioning about turning over a new leaf, beginnings, leaving the past in the rear-view mirror, and the positive attitude rhetoric to super-charge the possibilities. It's the boost that some people need to navigate beyond hard times, disappointments, discouragement, failed relationships, and every other dark moment in the old version. Hip hip hooray!
Thirty years ago my friend Curt Bradford challenged me with Isaiah 43:19, depicted in the picture above. It reminds me that every moment of my life happens under the promise of the new thing He is doing in my life. Yes, the clean landscape of the new year does offer a rush of potential and I'm applauding every person who sees this as a thresh-hold to change or course correction. Underneath the veneer of calendars and talk is the truth of human nature and the reality that we're mostly recidivists in the sin department, apt to repeat the mistakes of the past without supernatural intervention.
So, that's the difference between Isaiah 43:19, and all the promises of Scripture, for that matter, and the positive attitude jibe of culture. The new thing Isaiah promises is what God is doing. He is doing a new thing, constantly making everything new, doing the work of new creation over His people, inviting His people to be a part of what He is always doing.
Happy New Year is an appropriate greeting today. In reality, Happy New Thing is the joy of a growing relationship with Christ every single moment of every single day. So, Happy New Year.
Happy New Thing! WOW!
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