Happy New Year

It is hard to believe that 2017 is gone… and 2018 is now upon us. We have wrongly set up a dichotomy in our thinking and have made “new” and “old” enemies of each other.

There is nothing good about “new” in and of itself… nothing virtuous about “old.” In fact, in Jeremiah, doesn’t God counsel His people, “seek the old paths?” Yes He does.

And yet, this is the same God who ends the Bible with a victorious shout, “Behold, I make all things NEW!” (Emphasis mine, of course). The same book. The same God.

The new is, in its best form, always a completion of the old. We have to have the old for the new to have roots, and we need the new for the old to bear fruit. So they are not in opposition. One completes the other!

The Bible tells us to “sing to the Lord a new song.” And, “if any man is in Christ, he is a NEW creation… old things have passed away, and all things have become new.”

So we stand between these words. There is virtue in the old. There is value in the new. Neither is more spiritual than the other, and properly understood each one strengthens the other.

God has set new paths for some of us this year. Don’t resist them because they are new. This is the “pilgrim’s progress,” moving toward “a city whose builder and maker is God.” A new city. A new Jerusalem.

And yet our paths are straightest when our roots are deepest in the “old” ways. To be new without roots is to be a kite without a tether. To be old without fruit is to be a pot without a purpose or an anchor with no boat.

This year, whatever the “new” may be, (and believe me, NONE of us knows), we can always trust the God who is “the Ancient of Days,” and who will make “all things new.”

He has been… and will always be… our constant in days of change and times of advance. And wherever we may go in life, He will always get there before us!