INTRODUCTION
Seven in the morning on January 2, 2010, and the only light in the room it the dim light of my computer. Because the wife and three children are still sleeping, the only noise I hear is the buzz of the water heater. My mind is pondering a new year. New opportunities. New chances. New hope…Hope that this year will be better. This year I will finally get things right. Lose some weight. (Last year I lost 25 pounds, but there’s still more to lose!) Lose the weight of sins, the ones that so easily entangle me and weight me down. Look here are some attitudes that need an overhaul. Maybe an overhaul is an understatement. Like my weight, I just need to lose them too. Then there are relationships that need mending. A new year offers a clean slate.
New Year’s Day reminds me of one of my favorite days of the year, the opening day of baseball. Every opening day my mind is filled with this startling truth: Even the last year’s last place team starts the new season tied for first place. 0 wins and 0 losses. Trust me, as a Detroit Tiger baseball fan, that truth excited me for many seasons!
We love clean slates. That’s why we like New Year’s Day. But why do we wait for the calendar to clean the slate? I woke up this morning thinking of the Scripture, “God’s mercies are new EVERY morning.” If we cry out to God, each new day is a clean slate. Let’s call out to Him this morning for His new mercies, for fresh grace. The grace we need to make it through today. Not yesterday’s grace or the grace we will need tomorrow. Ask for today’s grace, today’s new mercies.
Ketchikan is the closest big city to where I live. It is only three hours away. Three hours of riding on a ferry boat. Ketchikan is where I go when I need a WalMart and McDonalds fix! But I don’t have to go there to get the morning paper. The Ketchikan Daily News is only daily paper I can buy on Prince of Wales Island. On New Year’s Eve, the paper printed some responses to what people wanted to see happen in 2010. One person’s response I found interesting. She wrote, “…I want to see our town continue to grow. I want to see everything stay the same.”
She speaks for many of us. A profound riddle of impossibility. We want to grow. We want to become more like Christ in our actions and attitudes. More like Christ in our thought lives. More like Christ in our relationships. But, deep down inside we want everything to stay the same. We cannot have both. We will either commit to personal growth or we will by default simply choose to stay the same way. We will either grow physically, spiritually, mentally, socially, emotionally or we will stay the same. Like a pool of water that is stagnant. Nothing new is happening in me. Just the same old same old. The alarm goes off. A new day. Time to put on the survival suit. Just plow through it. Do what needs to be done so that when the day is over I can call it a day. (I have always wondered: Why do we wait until it’s over to call it a day. At that point shouldn’t we be calling it a night?)
It doesn’t have to be that way. God’s calendar says, “My mercies are new every morning. You don’t have to wait for a new year. Call out to Me and I will rain new mercies down on you!” New mercies. I love new mercies. I need God’s new mercies. How about you?
That is what Nehemiah is all about. New opportunities to see God do in us and through us what He desires for today. We can choose to let God’s glory shine through us or we can choose to let everything stay the same way. We cannot have it both ways. What will it be: stay the same or grow?
I would like to grow. That was great. Let the mercies of today fall upon my life.
ReplyDeleteExcellent message! The definition of insanity being the idea that I can do the same thing, the same way and get a different result. Keep me from insanity! Let me see the "newness" of His mercies today, and let me extend that mercy to those around me.
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