Renewal

I didn’t feel any different when I woke up yesterday morning, but it was on the dawn of a new year. The outside looked the same as always, if not a little bit windier than usual. My home and family all looked the same. My congregation was still in the same place with worship times the same as always and the same members, though we were a bit slim in numbers thanks to holiday travel. Still, it was a new year. The calendar had moved up one incremental unit; our world had completed another orbit on its timeless circuit around our sun. I’d have to remind myself to change the year I put on the only check I still write – our contribution. It was 2012.

I’ve heard too many sermons filled with a certain degree of cynicism directed toward our tradition of New Year’s resolutions. Many remarks are made about the arbitrary nature of the New Year. But I can’t help but look at the turning of the calendar as yet another opportunity to seek refreshment and renewal in my life. It’s seems that as I get older (and there’s another arbitrary number for you), I see more opportunities for growth and for good in the secular holidays we observe, and I find myself feeling more and more distant from the attitudes I had toward them in the past. Sure, most resolutions are left unkept, but does that mean we shouldn’t try?

In the midst of one of his most sorrowful pieces, David writes in Psalm 51:7-13:

Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.

Let me hear joy and gladness; let the bones that you have broken rejoice.

Hide your face from my sins, and blot out all my iniquities.

Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.

Cast me not away from your presence, and take not your Holy Spirit from me.

Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and uphold me with a willing spirit.

Then I will teach transgressors your ways, and sinners will return to you.

David is confessing sin and pleading for forgiveness in these verses, recognizing how far he has fallen from God’s presence and begging for mercy. He calls for his spirit to be renewed, and he resolves to rededicate himself to following after and teaching God’s word. With renewal comes resolve. The two are inseparable. It only makes sense, then, as we reflect on the coming of a new year that we would want to resolve to better ourselves in some way. The question is one of meaningfulness. Can we resolve ourselves to be better in more than superficial ways? Can we have that same resolve David expresses in Psalm 51?

Romans 12:1-2 sees Paul also addressing renewal:

I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

Paul says our minds are to be renewed, and that such a renewal will completely transform us as individuals. He also states that this renewal will be tested; it is not something that happens once and is finished. Our transformation and our resolve as followers of Christ will be continually strained, but we can remain perfect and acceptable in God’s eyes. There will be times that our resolve falters, and like David, we may fall away from God for a time, but the separation does not have to last. We can always pick ourselves up. We can always reach out to God for forgiveness. We can always seek renewal and refreshment from Him.

Whether or not you view New Year’s resolutions as a worthwhile activity, you can make every day a day where you resolve to be closer to Christ. Walking in His footsteps is an unending effort, but He is always there to help us. Our fellow Christians are always there to help us. So as we turn the page on another year, let’s all resolve to renew our spirits and to renew our efforts in His work. Drawing closer to Christ and reflecting His light in all you say and do is the best resolution you can make, and it’s a challenge you’ll spend every day of your life trying to keep. The world may look the same one year to the next, but my outlook on this life can change when I renew my spirit and resolve to draw closer to God.

Celebrating…What Exactly?

The last couple of years, I’ve found myself very pensive about what the holiday season means to me and what it should possibly mean for other members of the Lord’s body. I don’t have to give much evidence that – like many Christian traditions and practices – the Christmas holiday has devolved into a symbol of Western materialism and misplaced priorities. I don’t have to do much to demonstrate that it’s become more hype than substance, and I don’t have to look far to find all manners of ugly behaviors, misplaced priorities, and outright greed connected with a holiday supposedly celebrating one who came to teach a message denouncing materialism, emphasizing simplicity and spirituality, and who lived a life characterized by modesty and self-control.

That’s the world, though. It doesn’t have to define me, and it’s not really my place to look down my nose at others. Instead, I should be taking a good, hard look in the mirror and asking myself: what am I celebrating?

Self-Righteousness?

Growing up in the church of Christ, I’ve heard sermon after sermon condemning Christmas as a secular holiday unordained in the Scriptures. After all, the probability of Jesus being born in December is remarkably low. The only observance set forth in the New Testament is that of the Lord’s Supper, commemorating the death (not the birth) of Christ. I’ve heard the arguments that Christmas originated as a pagan holiday, leaving hollow the calls to restore, “The true meaning of Christmas.” I can recite ad nauseam every reason Christians should reject Christmas, and I even know a few Christians who do.

I once heard a brother say that we spend all year trying to get people to focus on Christ, and then we spend the one time of year that they are focusing on Him diverting attention from Him as much as possible. And it’s true. You’d have little problem finding preachers proclaiming the evils of Christmas from the pulpit during any given December. I’ve seen whole series on the topic. I wonder, though, who is actually benefitting from these lessons. I wonder whose minds are actually changed by these exercises in. Instead, I think these lessons merely serve to satisfy our own self-righteousness. “We’re not dumb enough to think Jesus was really born December 25.” I used to eat that stuff up, but now it just seems empty. I’m sure it has a place; I’m just not sure what that place is.

Unspoken Materialism?

We can quote the Sermon on the Mount and I John 2 as much as we like, but we have to admit that we Christians in the United States still tend to be pretty materialistic. We like our cars, our houses, our phones, our computers, our Internet access, our cable, our running water, etc. We take our stuff so for granted that I honestly think we fool ourselves into thinking we are being selfless when we drop off a couple cans of beans at the local food kitchen or when we donate some clothes we don’t want anymore to Goodwill. We feel we are going far when we drop a check in the collection plate equal to 1/100 of our annual income…because it’s from the heart.

I think we should enjoy our blessings – don’t get me wrong. But are we celebrating stuff during the holiday season? Do we get impatient or frustrated with incorrect or “missing” gifts? (Why did mom get me the black iPod touch when I clearly said I wanted the white one?) Do we get overly excited about the gifts we see and unwrap? Are we turning a season of thanksgiving into a season of thanksgetting? While we are busying ourselves with not celebrating Christ during a pagan Christmas, we should be careful that we are not merely observing a celebration of materialism in His place.

How About a Little Peace, Love, and Understanding?

Here’s where I am right now:

• While I understand Jesus was likely not born on December 25 and that the date formerly belonged to a pagan Roman holiday, I don’t really care. No one celebrating Christmas these days understands the significance of or the imagery surrounding Sol Invictus. The once pagan icons and symbols have taken on other meanings. Observing Christmas does not, by default, turn someone into an idolator by association.
• The stuff is not important. We should be taking this time to teach about self-sacrifice and giving of one’s self rather than participating in the culture of getting. We should be encouraging people to think on peace and kindness, mercy and forgiveness amid the themes prevalent during this season.
• Jesus is the best example of these teachings. Let’s stop trying to tear people’s thoughts away from Christ because we want to win some religious-political argument. Let’s take advantage of the season to show people what Christ was really about. Let’s use this time for teachable moments – not opportunities to prove our own intellectual self-righteousness.

For me, Christmas has become a serious Romans 14 and I Corinthians 8 issue. Some of my fellow Christians set aside time to celebrate the birth of Jesus. Some refuse to acknowledge Christmas at all. I won’t judge either way, for I’ve come to the conclusion that Christmas for me is a celebration of family – a celebration of the families into which I was born and later married as well as the family of believers into which I was baptized. And, if I’m celebrating my Christian family during this season, then I can’t help but be thankful that Christ came to this world, was born miraculously, lived a sinless life, and died so we can all become adopted sons and daughters of God.

Jesus us the reason I have a spiritual family to celebrate, so far be it from me to erase Him from that celebration. He is more than the reason for a given season. He is the reason we have hope. He is the reason we are a people, a chosen generation, a nation of priests. I’ll then take every opportunity I have to share Him with others, even if it means I need to put on a little Christmas spirit once a year.

18,000 Light Years

I once heard an astronomer explain that we can’t help but live in the past – in a very literal sense. Every point of light we see in the sky happened in the past. If we are looking at a star that’s 18,000 light years away, then we are looking at light that began to travel from its point of origin 18,000 years ago. If we were closer to the star, it might look different. It might not even exist at all anymore, but we won’t know about any of those changes for 18,000 years.

All light takes time to travel. Even when you look up at the sun, what you see is what the sun looked like eight minutes ago. Even my talking to you is happening in the past. You are hearing and seeing everything I do after I do it. Nothing is truly simultaneous. We perceive nothing instantaneously. Even if the delay is imperceptible to our senses – for we have thoroughly adapted to the lag in which we live – it still exists. Every piece of stimuli in our environment has happened in the past, so we can’t help but live in the past.

Unfortunately, we probably spend too much time living in the past emotionally and spiritually. We still react to mistakes, stumbles, frustrations, and obstacles that should now be light years behind us are still clearly in our sights. Imagine if Paul had dwelled on the past. How crippled would he have been as a servant of Christ? Here was someone who had fought against Christianity, who had helped torture and kill Christians, who took pride in the harm he would inflict on Christians.

Here was his approach, though, in I Timothy 1:12-17:

I thank him who has given me strength, Christ Jesus our Lord, because he judged me faithful, appointing me to his service, though formerly I was a blasphemer, persecutor, and insolent opponent. But I received mercy because I had acted ignorantly in unbelief, and the grace of our Lord overflowed for me with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost. But I received mercy for this reason, that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display his perfect patience as an example to those who were to believe in him for eternal life. To the King of ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever.

Paul makes some similar statements in Philippians 3:7-11:

But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith— that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.

Paul recognized his past. He recognized how he got to where he was, but he didn’t live there. His past could not be escaped, but he put it light years behind him so he could focus on the future. It should be the same for every one of us. We all have our own baggage, our own issues, our own histories. But those pasts are not what define us any more than the reality of a star 18,000 light years away is governed by what we see from our perspective here on Earth.

Instead, we should be reaching for a future ahead of us, a hope that nothing else can offer us. That future should be our reality. It should be what defines us, and that should be what motivates us every day.