The Eighth Before Christmas

 

How many times have you wished for a new day? I don't mean the phenomenon that happens every twenty-four hours wherein the earth's rotation turns our side of the globe to the light. No, I mean the kind of new day that erases every other day of our existence. We have only the knowledge we've gained, perhaps even some of that is gone...the kinds of things we wish we could forget. We have a whole new life ahead of us. One where we are free to make a new life for ourselves, one where we can spend less time pursuing things we thought mattered, but didn't, and focus on the things that bring lasting joy.

If I were giving a talk I'd ask for a show of hands. I'm guessing most of the hands in the room would go up, including my own. Then I'd ask how many of us had wished for that kind of new day on more than one occasion.

More than twice? More than thrice?

How long would your hand stay up? I know mine wouldn't go down because I've lost track of the number of times I've wished for my slate to be wiped clean, to step through a portal into some new world where no one knows me, where nothing of my past could ever haunt me, with the whole world as my stomping grounds, all of life open to me. 

There are days where I've run out to some lonely part in the world and prayed for just such a thing, tears creating a pool on the dry earth. There have been moments when I've crawled into some nook, or closet, or cranny, squeezed my eyes shut and wished to heaven I were someone else, somewhere else, sometime else. Anything but who I was, where I was, when I was. Anything but what I was.

I wanted a new day.

How many of you can relate?

Why this longing for something new and fresh? Why this constant yearning for a rebirth? Why this pulsing ache for a new day?

I wonder if it isn't because this day is unsatisfying, and shallow, insipid, and empty. We are all, at heart, scum of the earth. We are all great sinners, in need of a great Saviour.

That's why today's Christmas song has become one of my favorites in spite of the fact that it is only about seventeen years old.

This song, released in 2003, compares Christ to a new day. 

You are the new day.
Meekness, love, humility
Come down to us this day:
Christ, your birth has proved to me
You are the new day.

  In Christ we do have the promise of a new day. As we live our lives right now, we can take courage in the fact that everything here and now will be made new and the best things in life will be glorified. 

Someday, the things we are doing now which seem boring and inconsequential, if they are done for the glory of Christ, will become the shining gems that make up the King's crown. 

Someday we will have a new heaven and a new earth in which there will be no more loss, despair, or grief. He will wipe every tear from our eyes.

All that will come to pass because of Christ and His incarnation. His birth has indeed proved to me that He is the New Day.