In the beginning God…Genesis 1:1

Another year has gone and a new one begins. Last night at midnight a million freezing people were herded together in Times Square to watch the Waterford Ball drop for sixty seconds as a mark of the new year. It is estimated that a billion others on the planet viewed the event. Additionally, there were countless persons connecting on their personal electronic devices with one another globally.  Despite the arctic New York temperatures freezing the very bone marrow, revelers amassed to say good bye to the old year and welcome in the new.

It occurs to me that there is something sadly symbolic about so many people celebrating, blowing horns, performing and dancing   around a “crystal ball” which drops down from a great height into their midst The comparison to Israel worshiping   the golden calf is not too far fetched. Twenty one centuries later,  humanity still  strays  from God and His commandments against bowing to idols!

I didn’t stay up to bring in the New Year. In fact I was abed shamefully early and Dan even earlier than me. We’d planned to shoot off a firework or two to celebrate New Year’s with our grand daughters, but it was too far cold to be outside, even if to delight the children  with fireworks. One of my grand daughters has had the flu and was still feeling tired so we played board games instead. After the girls went to sleep, my daughter and I stayed up for a while surfing the television,   but found nothing which enticed us to stay up to midnight. The hyped up media broadcast on the East Coast lost its appeal to me long ago. I could not imagine actually being where so many people were crammed together – and enjoying it!

And so I woke up today extremely well rested. It is still frigid: the temperature outside read 6 below. We drank our morning coffee and cocoa, warming up by the fire. The January sun on the ice and snow is beyond any words I have for “beautiful.” Icicles grow from the eaves of the house, curving inward like white fingers frozen on a hand. The snow is infused with crystals sparking like diamond studs. I look outside at God’s exquisite work this brand new morning and I can hardly breathe at such times. What God has wrought! What wonders God continually creates for His children who have the eyes to see and whose hearts beat with His. His creative wonders as well as His mercies are pristine and new every morning.

While a new page opens up the 2015 calendar, I’ve learned not to see the final moments of December as a break from last year. The first day of January marks a beginning point of time in our western culture even though in reality there is no discernible difference between the last seconds of 2014 and the first micro  seconds of 2015. Time moves and has moved effortlessly ever since God stepped into the void and separated the Light from the Dark. Our mortal minds cannot comprehend  life in time  which is somehow not linear, which is not measured by hours, divided into day and night, marked by seasons or counted in years.

Because of God’s generous loving heart, I see today as well as all of 2015 filled with potential and possibilities. Like an eager artist standing in front of an empty canvas, like a restless musician about to write down the songs he’s been mentally  playing,   I want only to fill up the blank pages in front of me with truth, thanksgiving and praise to the God who was and is and always will be for time and seasons are His, from everlasting to everlasting.

I count it a blessing  to arise to this new day knowing God’s desire is for us to receive from Him another year. It is not to revel or party that we receive the gift of a new year. It is so that He is revealed in our hearts.   It is    so that He will be honored and glorified every day in 2015. It is to do God’s will and leave my own willfulness in the past.

And that is better than any New Year’s Resolution I’ve ever made and tried to keep.

Happy New Year!