“Do not fear, for I am with you.
Do not anxiously look about you, for I am your God.
I will strengthen you, surely I will help you,
Surely I will uphold you with My righteous right hand.”
Isaiah 41:10
A quote from a 2013 article in the periodical Ancient Origins stated that “The earliest recorded New Year’s festivity dates back some 4,000 years to ancient Babylon and was deeply intertwined with religion and mythology.
For the Babylonians of ancient Mesopotamia, the first new moon following the vernal equinox—the day in late March with an equal amount of sunlight and darkness—heralded the start of a new year and represented the rebirth of the natural world.” As one looks to find the significance of the holiday it seems that regardless of the age or the culture (and almost all cultures observe the holiday), we find that while the tradition is very old, it universally celebrates something new. Time for a do-over. Time for a reset.
The ancient Babylonians saw it as the “rebirth of the natural world”. Other societies see it as the rebirth of the annual cycle of seasons, or the birth of a “new year”. There is a universality in man’s approach to entering into a new year. With the celebration always comes a sense of a new start; a sense that no matter how bleak the year before was, this year might be better. It is a time for hope and renewal. Out with the old! In with the new!
We are quickly approaching the last days of 2021, the old year. I don’t personally know anybody who will be sorry to see it go. To paraphrase the words of Thomas Payne, a colonial American, an unbeliever, but a wise one, “These have been the times that try men’s souls…What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives everything its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods.” 2021 if nothing else has caused many of us to reconsider how much value we place on certain aspects of our lives, and I think that is exactly as it should be.
There are many things we have taken for granted, while other things we have undervalued, and others yet that we have failed to consider at all. This last year we have experienced being stripped of our jobs, our homes, our prosperity, our ability to make choices, social interaction, our personal freedoms, and it has left us bewildered, confused, fearful and adrift. Many of us are departing the old year as mere shells of the people we used to be, and any hope that people can muster seems to be teetering on a razor’s edge.
But God…always has a plan
“See to it that you do not refuse Him who is speaking. For if those did not escape when they refused him who warned them on earth, much less will we escape who turn away from Him who warns from heaven. And His voice shook the earth then, but now He has promised, saying, “Yet once more I will shake not only the earth, but also the heaven.” This expression, “Yet once more,” denotes the removing of those things which can be shaken, as of created things, so that those things which cannot be shaken may remain. Therefore, since we receive a kingdom which cannot be shaken, let us show gratitude, by which we may offer to God an acceptable service with reverence and awe; for our God is a consuming fire.”
Hebrews 12:25-29
As near as I can tell, God is always speaking to us. He uses nature, circumstances, time, other people. There is a passage in scripture in Numbers 22 where He used a man’s donkey to talk some sense into him. Lately I am given to think that He is talking to us almost nonstop through world events. It says in Haggai 1:5,6
Now therefore, thus says the Lord of hosts, “Consider your ways! You
have sown much, but harvest little; you eat, but there is not enough to be satisfied; you drink, but there is not enough to become drunk; you put on clothing, but no one is warm enough; and he who earns, earns wages to put into a purse with holes.”
Those days are coming again, and I believe God is using them to speak to us. As far as tossing out the old, I believe that the Lord would have us toss out those tendencies we tend to take for granted, to undervalue, to fail to consider at all, and to that intent He has been shaking everything that can be shaken, right down to the very foundations. He is allowing us to become reacquainted with what really matters to us. He is using current events to clean out the barns to make room for new things, things of greater and even eternal value.
We are being called on to let go of an old kingdom ruled by the lowest desires of the devotees of this world and to embrace a new kingdom ruled by a compassionate and loving Father whose foundations cannot be shaken. The transition of power may not be complete by January 1st, but I guarantee that when it arrives it will have been worth the wait.
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