Like everyone else at this time of year, I started looking at the things that I had accomplished over the past 12 months, asking myself if the hopes and dreams of yesteryear had become the concrete realities of today. Sad to say, they weren’t even starting to set-up, let alone become concrete. I didn’t give much more thought to the matter after that. A passing “wish I had . . .” or perhaps a fleeting “Lord why did I . . .” but I turned my attention to more pressing happenings in my life: family, work, and whatever else I found along the way. As the days passed, I began again establishing my NEW New Years Resolutions. Interestingly, even though I had not completed my old “NYR’s” I was setting forth new goals, a brand new set of things that I wanted to do before one more year past me by. “Why were they different?” I thought to myself. It must be because things change, right?
In the course of a year friends are added, bills are too, and of course life just happens. So it is almost impossible to have the same resolutions year after year. After all, I am not the same man I was 12 months ago. I have learned a years worth of knowledge that, God willing, I will not have to learn again. I have different plans now then I did then. I even, just by the virtue of aging, have more responsibilities. Therefore, one cannot have the exact same goals. Sure, we will always have the old standby’s like weight loss and seeking to improve our self worth but those are vanity and man will always seek after vanity, but the over all outlook on life can never be the same as it was a year ago; not even as it was five minutes ago. We have lived that time, never to live it again, and by it (the passing of time) we have grown a bit wiser and a bit more accepting of our certain end. It is easy to assume then that mankind will never finish what we start - at least not on the grand scale. It is just a truism, an odd shaped piece in this puzzle we call life.
This might sadden some, to think that we cannot - just by the fact that we are humans - accomplish what we set out to do. Yet, as Christians, we should not see a fault, nay rather, we should see a greater picture. A contrasting mosaic of the life of our precious Redeemer, our great and mighty God, Jesus Christ to that of our own lives. You see, He never changes! He is always “the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever.” (Heb. 13:8) His goals have never altered, not even the smallest bit. What Jesus Christ declared in the days of old is still the truth today. What God commanded then he commands now. He desired a separate people then, a holy people, different from the world. He demands that we be holy today. We have been chosen by Him that hung the stars and set the worlds into being. We have been called out from among the world of sin and death to be risen with Christ unto righteousness and life everlasting. We are no longer of the world, “But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should show forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous light:” (1 Pet. 2:9).
In life we are promised change, for as Job testified: “. . . no man is sure of life.” (Job 24:22) Moments that could alter our state of reality will slip past our grasp never to be revived. Things will happen for both the good and the bad. Yet, there is one change that once it has been accomplished will never again be altered. It continues on, having no beginning and no end; it just is. That is the glorious day of our great God and only Savior, Jesus Christ. That holy day of God, foreseen by prophets and spoken of since the dawn of time itself. This is the coming of Jesus Christ, the Son of the Living God, who, at his appearing, “shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body, according to the working whereby he is able even to subdue all things unto himself.” (Phil. 3:21). |
