A Thought For The Week Of December 25, 2017

"Do not remember the former things, or consider the things of old. I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?" (Isaiah 43:18-19) This is the last of my weekly devotionals for 2017 and I have the pending change in the calendar to 2018 on my mind today. Over the next few days many people will be making so-called "New Year's Resolutions." These are promises either to ourselves or perhaps, for people of faith, to God, in which we commit ourselves to either doing something we haven't been doing but should be doing or to stop doing something that we have been doing but shouldn't be doing. I'm not big on New Year's Resolutions, but there's nothing wrong with making such resolutions - although the tough part is actually keeping them as the excitement of January 1 begins to fade. But rather than making a promise that deals with what we will or won't do in the future, I think that just maybe we need to make some resolutions about the past as well. Is there anyone among us who doesn't live with regrets? Do we not all have something in our past (in the past 12 months or even farther back) that we wish we hadn't one or said, or that we wish we had done or said. Perhaps we hurt someone, or missed an opportunity to share with someone in need, or failed to reconcile with someone before we found out it was too late. We all probably have these experiences or more in our past. I want to encourage you to let them go. Try to make amends where it's possible and productive to do so - but don't allow yourself to be held hostage by a past that you simply can't change. In Isaiah 43:18 God tells his people that they need to let go of the past - and for one very simple reason. God has already moved on. We can burden ourselves with our failures of the past and let them bind us in chains we can't escape from - but to what end? Instead, why not simply let it go and look to God? God is already "doing a new thing." For God, the past is past - for God, even our past is past and the grace of God that appeared in Jesus has given us a new start. So, if we're going to make New Year's Resolutions - maybe one of them should be to look (carefully and constantly) to see what new thing God is doing around us and to be open to what new thing God might want to do through us.