Reaching for the New Day
After my dad retired, he and my mom lived on a remote lake in North Carolina. Dad often found random debris floating in the water and would retrieve the assorted objects so they wouldn't pollute the lake. Over time, he began using the flotsam and jetsam to create new things. I thought about his hobby as I trolled a coastal beach where my family and I were vacationing in the final days of 2022. A recent storm had coughed up all kinds of rubble.
As I walked, I reflected on the previous twelve months, as was my habit at the end of every year. I call it "The Year in Review,” a chance to remember the last year before moving on to a new one. Among other objectives, I use it as an opportunity to evaluate my spiritual life.
Usually, when I look back over a whole year, I see glimmers of growth. Corinthians 2:14 says, "Though our outer self is wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day." In that moment, however, all I could call up were broken bits and pieces of debris floating in my heart and mind, like the detritus on the beach. Some storms had churned up rubble over the course of my year. Perhaps my glasses were being colored by those painful circumstances – the things one doesn’t include in an annual Christmas card – and how I had responded to them.
As I left the beach, I wondered if God was making me new or if I was the same old person I had been at the beginning of the year.
The days passed, and New Year's Eve arrived. As the clock struck midnight and a new year officially began, I celebrated the occasion with my family and went to sleep, hoping the next year would bring more growth than the previous one.
The following day, I awoke to the dawning of a new year. Looking outside, I saw the rising sun. In the lovely morning light, I watched and listened as birds sang and bathed in the lagoon behind our house. Such a stunning display felt like a humbling response to my doubts. Even though I couldn't see what had happened behind the scenes of time and space to bring it about, God had created the earth and everything in it. He made the sun and caused our planet to orbit it while spinning on an invisible axis. And every time the world turns, we are given a new day; every time it orbits, we are given a new year. God is the master of making and doing new things. He literally shows us every day.
In Isaiah 43:18-19, God told the Israelites to "Forget the former things, do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in a wasteland." My tendency is to forget God’s faithfulness but never forget my broken humanity. I cling to things Christ died to cover: lies, sins, mistakes, and sorrows. In fact, I often find myself dwelling in those places instead of remaining in the truth that God is renewing me day by day.
But, like a spring bloom that bursts forth from decaying matter buried underground, I know God's work in me will one day blossom from the hidden recesses of my heart. Like the lovely treasures dad created from the junk in the lake, God will take all of my junk, wasting nothing, and craft it into something new and better as He makes me holy. In His hands, my worst sins, pains, and sorrows are re-woven. Every broken relationship, illness, tear, and sin is bound together in God's redemptive way and made beautiful in Christ. Sometimes I just need a reminder.
Later that morning, as the earth began another trip around the sun, I walked the beach again. This time, as I hauled out all of the flotsam and jetsam of the prior year, I didn't fret over it. Instead, I spread it out on my spiritual dock and asked God to turn it into something better. Then I let it all go and reached for the new day.
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