There might be a not so clear, but present, danger lurking amid the celebrations of this New Year. With full share of hardship on many levels, 2020 proved to be a bit of a parody in itself. It made the old adage “you’ve got to laugh or you’ll cry” seem more truthful than ever. The truth is that we’ve all done a little bit of both as we have inched our way through this last year.

The present danger is in the desperation, albeit sincere, to turn over a new leaf or make a fresh start that can find us clinging ever so tightly to the futile promises of January 1st. The faulty assurance that the first day of the year is guaranteed to be the first day of many, produces the kind of thinking that undermines what we have surly learned by now, that we have no idea what tomorrow will bring us.

My Personal Prayer is that I would not begin this year as arrogantly as I began the last.

In reality, each new day sounds forth echoes of a beating clock, the changing of hours and minutes pass by like the wind leaving little time for far too many things. The clarity of 2020 worked quickly to highlight what was essential, and in turn, exposed us for spending the smallest percentage of our time on those things.

Before 2020, our busy and important schedules promised to save the world, but they didn’t and couldn’t and never were intended to be the way of salvation for any of us. For this we can be grateful, for it is a mercy to witness the fraudulent forms of salvation fall away from true reality.

Salvation is only through Christ and He waits, even at the chimes of midnight offering life to all that will come.

“Ere yet the midnight bell proclaims the birth of a new year, may you be born to God: at any rate once more shall the truth by which men are regenerated be lovingly brought under your attention. If this New Year shall be full of unbelief, it will be sure to be dark and dreary. If it be baptized into faith, it will be saturated with benediction. If we will believe our God as he deserves to be believed, our way will run along the still waters, and our rest will be in green pastures. Trusting in the Lord, we shall be prepared for trials, and shall even welcome them as black ships laden with bright treasures.” - Charles Spurgeon

Just one month before his death, on New Years Day, January 1, 1892, Spurgeon confessed, “We know nothing of the events which lie before us: of life or death to ourselves or to our friends, or of changes of position or of sickness or health.”

It is a sobering thought that we know nothing of the events that lie before us and it should create pause before we jump into the misleading hopes of this New Year.

Honest reflection will discover Grace is alive in our lives.

We can glance backwards over the last year and see mercies that protected us in the pitch black, blessings that surprised us as we slowed down, and even life strangled by tremendous hardship, that revealed that hope survived.

That kind of a year can change a person if they let it!

Often the New Year is a carefree platform that promotes changing everything about us without ever really changing a thing. Hopefully, we’ve learned not to expect real change that doesn’t come at a real cost. Pain and suffering, although more than unpleasant at the time, truly moves us in one direction or another.

The question then becomes, what direction did 2020 move us?

For me, I am learning that I cannot rely on myself, my schedule or some set of faulty resolutions for transformation, because there is a gross instability in humans and worldly systems that can never offer me peace.

I am learning that if I am going to move forward in this world that it has to be according to the Will of God and not the will of man. This is a hard yet fruitful lesson that will be with me every new year ahead.

Christ is Lord, He is Sovereign and Good. My circumstance does not proclaim that Truth, Christ’s life in me, living through my circumstance does. (Galatians 2:20)

“The Lord Help thee poor soul, to believe that the Man who died on Calvary was God, and that he took the sin of all believers upon himself - that thou, being a sinner and a believer, he has taken thy sins, and that thou art free.” - Charles Spurgeon

I do pray that 2021 is less eventful than 2020, but I hold on to the hope that even if it is not, my peace is not shaken, because my peace comes from an unshakable kingdom that produces in me a steadfast faith. (Hebrews 12:28)

Happy New Year!

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