The Blog: Laments From La Mancha

So happy 2005.

I have a pile of photos that we took on our trip to Vegas, but I promise I will only bore you with some of them (tomorrow).

But I wanted to take out a few minutes to say “Happy New Year.”

The New Year is an interesting time in my life. I always like to look back over the year that I’ve just gone through and make plans for the new one. For the past 5 years or so I’ve spent every New Years Eve with Michelle. It’s always just the two of us and normally we are not up past 12:05 as I have to rush off to work in a few hours. We take a minute or two to reflect on the things we liked the best and the things we hated the most.

We list all the things that we promised to accomplish and where we fell short. We forgive, release each other from those obligations that we promised and didn’t deliver. All balances are returned to zero.

It’s our time to share all those things that we want to leave in the old year and what we’d like to do in the new.

It’s a fresh start.

A new beginning; a chance to start all over. The old slate is clean and all that has happened before is no longer there.

One of the ideas that I’ve clung to is the concept of a new beginning in Christ. We are told when we first become Christians that our old life is gone; that everything we ever did in the past is washed away. Yet we are often led to believe that once we become a Christian our permanent record begins.

Every time we screw up from the moment we accept Christ until the day we day is now and forever held against us. We must do more good than we do bad in order to keep a positive score with God; if we don’t, then we are just as lost as when we were sinners.

I spent years of my life feeling like that. I don’t know if this is a doctrine that was taught of if that was just how I connected the dots in my head. I find that idea to be true with a lot of what I’ve believed over the course of my walk with God; that idea of having to sort out what’s taught, what’s self imposed, and what’s really true. Through that process I’ve come to believe that our new beginning is not a one time event in our Christian faith. Rather it is renewal that begins every day, every hour, every minute that we enter into God’s presence.

I am being made new.

I screw up a lot. I make a lot of mistakes. I sin. Sometimes when I look over the cumulative effect of all the sin in my life since I first accept Christ it becomes overwhelming for me. I know that I’ve asked for forgiveness. I know that I’ve gone in prayer to God but I have a hard time letting them go.

This year I’m letting them go, or at least I am trying to.

I’m going to leave those suckers back in the mud where they belong. My new beginning starts now, and tomorrow when I need it, and the day after. Each day I will have a new beginning, a new chance to do the right things, make the right choices and live in right ways.

Today is a new year. Today is a new beginning.

I don’t know. Maybe you feel the same way I do, maybe you drag your sin around like God really cannot forgive you. Maybe you believe that at one point your faith was strong and God really lived inside you and now, well, now you’re just an empty shell living on your former Christian glory.

Today is a day of hope. Everything that ever was is no more. Your slate is clean, your day is new. You will rise and fall with every step you take, but as long as you continue to take them you will have a new chance and a new start.

Here’s to new beginnings.