Happy New Year (a new thing)

So, it's nearly 2014! Another new year! There are always mixed reactions to celebrating New Year, but I’ve really noticed it this year more than ever, due partly to having quite a few friends who have had a really tough time of it in 2013. I can see their view point…there is definitely a lot of expectation put on the one evening of New Year’s Eve, and if 2013 has been a tough year (which I know it has been for many of you) then why indeed would you want to celebrate its passing (at least, with anything more than sheer relief!) My natural optimistic instinct is to just want to give the people concerned a great big hug, tell them that somehow it’s going to be ok, and to want to make everything better for them – I don’t like knowing that people are hurting (it makes me hurt too!) But, it turns out that I can’t just magically make things better with optimism, no matter how hard I try to think of the right things to do or say.

The good news though, is that I can do something much better. Firstly, I can continue to pray for you. And secondly, I can share with you what I know of the hope that is based on solid promises, rather than optimism – and I happen to trust the one who has made those promises (although, I don’t trust Him nearly as much as I want to or know I should – but that’s a whole different blog post!)

Most of you will by now know that Steven Curtis Chapman is one of my favourite singer-songwriters (for various reasons, which I won’t go into here). He has written this song called Happy new Year, which is at the end of his latest Christmas album. It ends with hope for the year to come:
“The God who made everything, is remaking everything.
The God who made everything, He says I’m making all things new”.

This ties in amazingly with Bible Gateway’s verse of the day for today (which I get delivered to my inbox every day):
"Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland." Isaiah 43: 18-19.

Now this prophecy was written to a people who had really had a tough time of it. They, of all people, would have had a reason to “dwell in the past” and on the “former things”. Yet, they are given this promise to hold onto, to look and see that God is doing a new thing: He is making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland – i.e. bringing life to places that were formerly only places of death, where anything other than death seemed like an impossibility. Some of 2013 may have looked like a wilderness or a wasteland to you, and you aren't sure how things could ever get better. But, with God, nothing is impossible. I had no idea how I was going to find a job after completing my PhD at the end of last year (or what that job should even be), but God found me one. Then, I had no idea how to find somewhere to live in my new town, this place I didn't know at all - but God found me somewhere. I had no idea how to find a new church family to connect into - but God found me an amazing one(!) You get the picture. (There are still plenty more difficult situations that have yet to be resolved, but I know that my God will somehow make a way!) 

I also think of a passage in another Old Testament book of the Bible:
“I remember my affliction and my wandering, the bitterness and the gall. I well remember them, and my soul is downcast within me. Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope: Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.” Lamentations 3:19-23

God’s compassions are new not just every year, but every day (and actually, also every moment of every day!) The coming of a new year just gives us a good chance to stop and reflect. Yes it is a chance to remember with thanks the good things from 2013. But it is also a chance to remember that however hard 2013 has been, we don’t have to get stuck there and dwell in the things now from our past, but we can move on, with hope and expectation, into all that the future brings – that God is doing a new thing.

Up until fairly recently I found it really hard to think about the future. I suppose it was a result of the (mostly self-imposed) pressure of having to choose “the perfect” subjects for GCSE (then for A-level, then for university, then for a job…the list goes on; I don’t know if anyone else can relate to this?!) I used to look into the future and just get paralysed with fear, so it was easier not to look there at all, and just go with the flow of what was happening right now, but without any goals or direction (because that would involve thinking about the future!) But I have been, and am still being, more and more freed from this paralysing fear, such that I can now look at the future. I still don’t know what’s ahead, and it still scares me a bit, but whatever lies ahead, I know the One who walks beside me  (and I know that he has also placed some amazing people around me, for me to also walk with and encourage/ be encouraged by!) And I know that 2014 will be a good year. I was challenged a few weeks ago to think about what my expectations were for 2014. I didn’t have an answer at the time, but I think I do now (at least partly). What are your expectations for 2014?

So, Happy New Year, and every blessing for the year ahead :)