As January comes to a close, I realize that this is maybe the first New Year where it’s actually felt new.

I normally dismiss  the pop-fizz-clink and sparkle as a peculiar midpoint in the school year. For me, New Year’s Day has always been the first day of school; the last day of school, New Year’s Eve. Celebration and anticipation have always been tied to those.

It’s different this year. Come year’s end, something in me wanted waking.

I want waking from sorrow, from disappointment; from dysfunction and self-destruction.  I want waking from fear of the future. I want waking from feeling “not enough.”

This is not the life I was Meant to live.

It’s about more than semesters:

I still and always want waking. 

 

Someone who never knows what day it is can’t be automatically renewed when the calendar turns. But every holiday–every holy day–points us toward the deeper reality in Christ.

At the New Year, we take the reset of the calendar as a reset for ourselves. We have new goals and new hope of reaching them. We feel a new freedom to live differently. January is unique in how it rolls out in front of us like The Red Carpet, ushering us into the life of joy and fulfillment we’re sure we’re supposed to have.

But it’s not January that has the power to do that. It’s Jesus.

In Him, I am  called a “New Creation.” Weirdly, in January, everyone feels like one. But for those who know Jesus, we have the power to live like it more than once a year.

If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has gone; the new has come!
(2 Cor 5:17)

That newness plays out in new mercy each morning, and the renewed promise for our daily bread. The turn of the calendar, the turn of the semester–this time they call attention to my hunger for renewal.

I’m learning that part of living in the Glory of the Resurrection is holding on to a Hope that restoration is coming–and letting that Hope run as deep as the ache that comes from that which isn’t there yet. 

“Forget the former things: do not dwell on the past. See? I am doing a new thing! Do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.” 

Isaiah 43:18-19

Thank you, Lord. I’m ready.