I often think that there are ‘two’ New Years in our culture: there is of course the New Year that begins on 1st January – and the whole world likes to celebrate that. Yet in terms of fresh starts and big changes, the start of September feels more like a new year: with so many people coming back from holidays, the new school terms and new things start to happen.
Yet the end of summer can bring with it a host of regrets: certainly the weather has not been quite what many of us hoped, but alongside that maybe the sense for some that they weren’t able to make the most of the ‘holiday season’ as they might have wanted. So much anticipation and suddenly it’s all over! How can Christians deal with such a sense of having missed-out and a longing for a better outcome?
We saw last Sunday how the apostle Paul describes his life experience as a Christian, framed as it was with a great deal of persecution, suffering and pain. He told the Corinthian Christians that human beings are like jars of clay – just frail, weak and functional – yet Christians are jars of clay that hold within them the treasure of the Gospel message. Whatever our experience of the world around us, faith in the Lord Jesus means that…
“God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.” (2 Cor 4:6)
As we step forwards into this new (academic) year, we can dismiss whatever is behind us because looking to Jesus we know that the best is yet to come! Praise God for such hope!
Spencer Shaw