Kethuvim

I think I just created two new words, I'm so flippin' talented. Anyway, I was thinking about New Year's the other night as I watched Ryan Seacrest try desperately to hide his homosexuality behind a very awkward peck on the cheek with Christina Aguliera, and I was wondering why we get so excited about New Year's Eve. Think about it, New Year's is honestly just another day where we turn the calendars over to the next day/month/year because of the moon cycle and the planet's position around the sun. So why the excitement?

Sure, for some I think it's just another really good reason to get lit and wake up in a puddle of your own urine, but for most I think it goes much deeper than that. I think somewhere deep inside of us we desire to be new. There's an excitement to a new beginning, where for at least a minute/hour/day/whatever, we feel like we can be a new person. There's something inside most of us that screams to us that we aren't right. There's a deep discontent with how things are that most of us are afraid to talk about or even think about for more than just a fleeting second, so we bury it hoping it will go away. New Year's appeals to us, because it represents this feeling down inside of us that we desire to be new and different. This is why we make New Year's resolutions that we know we can't keep, but we like the idea of trying.

I think God understands this yearning inside of us to be different. I think he's responsible for wiring it into our DNA. In the book of Lamentations, the author says, "Because of the Lord's great love we are not consumed, for his compassions (some translations "mercies") never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness." Let that sink in for a minute and let it wash over you. With God, every day is a New Year celebration. You don't have to yearn to be new, you are made new because all of your screw-ups are erased and you are renewed in the love of God. I believe this is the mark of the Kingdom of God. It is a Kingdom built on love, with the ability to restore and renew all things.

The New Testament talks extensively about the idea that we have an old self that is replaced by a new self in Jesus. How did this happen? A man two thousand years ago made it possible because he was so full of love, that he couldn't allow us to live in the old self anymore. He knew that the old self was broken and fractured, and his great desire was, and still is, to see all of God's creation and his creatures made new. You don't have to be broken and fractured. Your old self sucks, maybe it's time for it to be replaced. In the words of the musician Joseph Arthur, "You've been loved all the way."