The seemingly endless cycle of the years -Spring-Summer-Fall and Winter brings us to what we call a new year-2016. Sometimes the passages of time begin weighing on us. We quietly mutter, “Here we go all over again.” Do we dare ask, “Are we just going round and round or what? “
The ancient Greeks and Romans as well as the religions of the East also experienced time as cyclical. Life was determined by the ebb and flow of fate-“what will be will be.” Bursts of creativity, upheavals and revolutions happened but the ebb and flow of fate would finally shape all things. No year offered anything new. Today it is easy to believe we are on the wheel of time when we come to the end of another year and not much changed except maybe some loved ones died and some babies were born and we still battle the same addictions and the same frustrations of December, 2014.
But from the beginning scripture casts another vision; Creation and New Creation. Time is not an eternal circle. Time is a wonderful creation of the Creator. Time is not in the hands of fate- our DNA or the wounds of the past. Time is in fact in the hands of a purposeful, loving and redeeming God. God has come into time. He is literally Immanuel-God with us in time. Earth and time are now charged with the grandeur of God.
Within this worldview time has a beginning and a telos-a grand completion. Time is not leading to a terminal-a termination point. It is headed to a telos-a completion- a perfection. The telos is Jesus Christ the Lord coming in glory!
Because we are children of God on the pilgrim way we are not victims of our DNAs or our childhoods. Liberation from the powers, from death and despair is now happening in history and in us. “We are being inwardly renewed every day.” But this is not progress. Progress says that if I just try hard enough I will get “better and better every day in every way every year.”
We are not progressing. But we are growing- maturing in Christ. God’s strength really is being made perfect in our weaknesses . Frustrations, defeats and loss happen inside Faith-the victory that overcomes the world.
So right now let’s kill, bury and conduct a funeral for our false hopes and blind ambitions and together welcome the Spirit of God anew who is the guarantee that one is coming in time to Complete all of us and all creation. Celebrate Jesus on New Years Eve and New Years Day and every day in 2016.