Now This would be a New Year to celebrate!
What excitement, a New Year has arrived, a new page on the calendar with new hope and expectation! Did you stay up late and celebrate on New Year’s Eve? Did you party into the wee small hours of our brand New Year?
Ask yourself, do you expect this year will be any different from last year or the year before? Have we had a change of government? Is there a new breakthrough that would eliminate the common cold or flu? Will the merchants now charge fairer prices or our employers suddenly pay us what we are worth?
Oh, if only we could wake up New Year’s morning and just know that there were no more criminals or human predators. What a delight it would be if we never heard another lie, and we could categorically trust everyone me meet. How wonderful it would feel if there were no more sickness and pain. And wouldn’t it be fantastic to make that call to our soldiers overseas and call them home because there was no more war, no more tyranny or oppression. Now THAT would be a New Year to celebrate.
As difficult as it is for us to conceptualize a world without war, lies, pain and sorrow, that is exactly how the Maker of the universe designed this world in the beginning. So, what went wrong?
In
God’s book, the Bible, He recorded exactly what did go wrong after He
had created man in the perfection of His own image. God tells us that
His newly created man and woman became separated from Him when they
fell to temptation and disobedience. This caused a pandemic of impurity
and sin in all of mankind down through the ages. Today, each of us long
for the peace and purity of the original plan; a plan in which there is
no war, crime or disease. Each one of us suffers a deep loneliness for
the Creator, our Heavenly Father that has resulted in mankind’s
insatiable interest in religion.The Creator reminds us that unless we seriously follow Him, all things will continue as they did last year. He writes, “He who would love life and see good days, let him refrain his tongue from evil and his lips from speaking deceit. Let him turn away from evil and do good; let him seek peace and pursue it, for the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous and His ears are open to their prayers. But the face of the Lord is against those who do evil.”
By stating this, God is also saying, “Your destiny is not a matter of chance--it is a matter of choice! It is not a thing to be waited for-- it is a thing to be achieved.”
This New Year, heed the call of your Heavenly Father--search for Him with all your heart, and when you do, His promise is that you will find Him.
We wish you a happy New Year
Douglas W. Greenfield: author
Maggie Greenfield: editor