A new year makes me think of new beginnings. The move to a new calendar feels like a fresh start—a blank page with all sorts of possibilities. It’s easy to think now is when everything can change.
Then as January progresses into February, the newness wears of. The New Year’s resolutions are long forgotten and life feels the same as it was.
Or have we just stopped looking for the newness in our everyday?
New beginnings don’t depend on the change of the calendar year. God gives us a new start every day.
Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions (mercies) never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. Lamentations 3:22-23 NIV (parentheses NLT)
Because of His love, a bad day or a bad year won’t destroy us. We can start again. Over and over. He offers new beginnings—but if we don’t have eyes open to see them, we will miss them.
There is hope in knowing God lets us start over right now.
There is encouragement in knowing it’s never too late to try again.
There is strength in remembering that God’s time table is not the same as ours.
We get stuck in what we see and know and the way things have always been, and struggle to move forward. When we think it’s too late for change, we’re seeing it from our own sense of time. But God doesn’t work on our time frame.
He moves us forward in His time and in His way.
“But forget all that—it is nothing compared to what I am going to do. For I am about to do something new. See, I have already begun! Do you not see it? I will make a pathway through the wilderness. I will create rivers in the dry wasteland. Isaiah 43:18-19 NLT
God doesn’t say “Wait until next year.”
He says “Come with Me now. Today. I have already begun. Do you see it?”
As we step into 2015, let’s not miss out on what God is working on and trying to show us. Change can happen at any time—no matter what the calendar says.
God can and will make all things new. Maybe the question is—are we still watching and waiting for it past January?
Photo credit: K. Rath 2014