First Sunday in the New Year
After ‘Happy Christmas’, ‘Happy New Year’ is what could be described as the “Greeting of The Season”.
How do we express that greeting? I suspect that we all send Christmas Cards and some send New Years cards too. The Royal Mail estimates that it delivers around 150 million cards during the Christmas period. It is also thought that, on average, each person in the UK sends and receives 17 Christmas cards.
Some cards will be blank to challenge our creativeness, some will wish the recipient a simple secular greeting whilst some will be effusive, almost overly so, and others will have a biblical or Christian greeting.
Not many people send a New Year card now adays. Some will get or may be send a year-end round-up letter.
That said, I don’t think that the New Year is not actually that ‘New’.
Despite the thousands of cards shouting ‘Happy Christmas’ or ‘Happy New Year’ I would dare to say that the recipients will invariably wake on New Years Day to the same, or very similar, things that went on before.
Prices will be the same or increase, the same old things going on within families, health not getting any better. We can all think of something…
Instead of a Happy New Year, for some it will be a terrible hang-over, be it from an overindulgence in ‘celebrating’ or a hang-over of the woes from the previous weeks and months just rolling on inexorably.
Sadly there is no magic hour at midnight that suddenly ushers in a utopia.
OK now we have considered the doom and gloom lets think about what could make a Happy New Year.
I would suggest that there are three things that I think could make a Happy New Year for each of us.
- A New Birth
- A New Walk
- A New Goal
What happens if we neglect The New Birth, The New Walk and The New Goals?
• If there is no New Birth then our soul is lost.
o But where there is new birth we have Salvation.
• If there is no New Walk then the testimonies about Jesus and his importance are lost.
o But if there is that new walk with God we have gained Separation from our old self.
• If there is no New Goal then all the rewards that will accrue will be lost.
o But If we have new goals then we must dedicate ourselves to them and God.
And the result?
We will experience the joy of living in the midst of His Will.