Christmas, the New Year and the winter solstice all share a common theme. They represent a dividing line between the old and the new. Each one of these events represents a passage from one measured segment of our life to another.

On New Years Eve, people all over the world wait and watch while the last minutes of the old year passes away. We are waiting to welcome the New Year in countless different ways, all of which have one thing in common, the hope for good life, good health and good fortune in the coming year. The winter solstice is the solar new year. It marks the beginning and the ending of the sun’s yearly cycle. As the old year passes, the days grow shorter. The light wanes and the darkness grows. As the days grow longer, the world around us warms, and new life slowly begins to spring up around us. It too is a sign of life and hope. Our desire for life and health is the most natural thing in the world. But our hope for this kind of grace is not something that we can fulfill by ourselves. Christmas, the birth of the Christ child is pretty obviously a new beginning as well. Every child is a living symbol of hope and potential, but this child’s birth is more than just a symbol. It is God’s way of adding new life and potential, new hope to all of our lives. Paul says it bluntly it is “the grace of God that has been given you in Christ Jesus.”
(1 Corinthians 1:4)

With the New Year many of us make resolutions; there are always things in our lives that could use improving. Usually these are life style or health related. We want to loose weight, to get more exercise or find more time for friends and families. There are usually other things in our lives that need resolving though; many of them seem beyond our control. Either our will power fails or other people are involved and there is nothing we can do. These are the things that truly bind us, that form the clouds of darkness that make our lives difficult. Difficult relationships and lack of self control are way too familiar to most of us. Frankly they are part of what makes us human. Saint Paul himself said “I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me.” (Romans 7:19-20) He too needed hope, the new life that only God can provide.

New Years come and go. The sun waxes and wanes in a perpetual cycle of light and darkness. The light we need though has to nurture our spirit as well as our physical being. Jesus said "I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life." ( John 8:12) It is his light that addresses our deepest needs, a light that shines in the darkest places of our lives. Resolving to follow Jesus is a pathway to hope. In him we can find the strength and compassion to deal with the difficulties of life.

Like that blossoms that take their new life from the growing warmth that the sun brings, we too find our new life in Jesus Christ. And like the blossoms, we too grow in our faith slowly opening as the Son of God bathes us in his love and grace.

Pastor Jim Bliss
January 2005