Happy New Year!

Thirty five years ago, I bought a very large, and very beautiful conch shell. I had been told that if I cut the end off, I could blow through the resulting hole and create a unique sound. So I bought a diamond saw blade, spent days sawing through the shell (much tougher than I thought), and then cut my lips to ribbons blowing through the hole I created. While it looked pretty smooth, sawing had left tiny jagged edges that pretty much simulated dragging my lips over broken coral. After using polishing grit on the hole for a week, my lips were healed enough for a second try. It sounded pretty weak… but I kept at it, and got better. Now when I lift the shell to my lips, a pure, deep note resonates from the shell. Picture a young Hawaiian standing on a bluff overlooking the village… his rippling muscles catching the last few rays of the setting sun… as he lifts a conch shell to his lips and sounds a beautiful call to the luau with an impossibly long blast on his conch shell horn. That’s what I imagine every time I blow the thing. I know… I know… I have an incredible imagination! Hahaha!!!  

Well, almost every year since then, I have rung in the New Year with long blasts on that conch shell horn… often to the embarrassment of my family. I guess it qualifies as a tradition. Of course, every year there are tens of thousands of people who watch a ball drop in Times Square in New York City; millions more watch it on television. Whatever the tradition, people find ways to celebrate the start of the New Year. 

Now all of this celebrating is being done by those of us who follow the Gregorian calendar. If you are Jewish, the New Year starts on a completely different day. The Chinese New Year is different, too, and so it goes for many of the cultures and people of our planet: different calendars, different New Year’s days, different celebrations, and different traditions. But no matter how we celebrate, one aspect remains the same in all cultures… we say farewell to the old year and welcome in the New Year. We take stock of the things in our lives that haven’t worked out so well, and make resolutions to do better in the coming months of the New Year. We hope for a happier, healthier, more prosperous New Year. We wish each other “Happy New Year,” but in a couple of weeks (months at the most) the resolutions are forgotten, and life continues on pretty much as it had for the past year. 

I have had only one truly memorable New Year’s Day in my life, and it wasn’t on January 1^st… it was on September 4^th, 1988. It was on that day, in Charlotte, North Carolina, that I experienced the first new day in my life. It was close to noon that day when I opened my heart and asked Christ to come into my life. Immediately, Christ came into my life and it was a New Day… a New Year… a New Life! The awesome joy of that moment makes all New Year’s celebrations pale by comparison. Paul knew that joy, and wrote of it in 2 Corinthians 5:17… 

“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!”

This is such great news, that Paul ends the sentence with an exclamation point!!! (I may be a bit of an overachiever in THAT department) 

I encourage you to do the following to start this New Year:  read the whole of that Scripture passage     (2 Corinthians 5:16-21).  After you have read it, think about it, pray about it, settle it into your heart,  and then… consider how you might apply that news to your situation. How could that news change what’s happening in Israel and Gaza? How could it change things at work, at church, in your family, perhaps even during your daily commute? 

Make no mistake, I do wish you all the best in the coming year. It’s just that “Happy New Year” seems so shallow and formulaic… when we could be embracing a new brother or sister in Christ, proclaiming with joy and excitement: “Happy New Life!” 

Your brother in Christ, 

Dave