It’s New Years Day. So I am supposed to tell you “happy new year.” So, have a “happy new year.” There. I did it. Everybody’s saying it. It’s what we’re supposed to say. And, after all, no one wants a repeat of 2020. Coronavirus, go away! Election fraud, go away! Orange hair man, go away! (I'm only quoting what I hear people say, that somehow a change in leadership is the key to a happy new year.)
Lately, the Lord has been helping me to see
that the “going away” of these things will not be the guarantee that next year
will be happier. A friend posted something
recently from C. S. Lewis, from back in the 1950’s. He was asked how he could face each day since
the atom bomb was invented. His answer
was something like, “I’ll do what people did in the time of the plague or the
time of the Roman emperor Nero or the times of either WWI or WW2 or any other
time in history.” The point is that
every year and era have its fear factors.
Another thing the Lord showed me recently, if
you follow our posts, was the post on YAHWEH-Nissi, the LORD our banner. I was reminded that, as a follower of Christ
the coronavirus, election and latest President of the United States are not
my issues. The LORD is my issue. Jesus Christ is my banner. The gospel is what I must lift high.
Well, this is all good and well. But I am just quite possibly still not
getting the point. I have to tell you
about something we recently saw in our neighborhood. Two houses down, on our same side of the
street, one of those huge dumpsters showed up in front of Susan's house. No wait, it’s Sharon, I think. Anyway, you know what I mean. The kind you would have at your house if you
were replacing the asphalt shingle roofing.
You would fill that with the trash and then the dumpster guys would come
and carry it off.
But this wasn’t a roof job. A couple of days after it showed up, the neighbor between our place and the lady's house, told us she had died. He knew her better than we did, and yet he
only found out a few days after it happened.
And now, there was a dumpster out in front. And while you couldn’t see in it (it’s too
high) you could see it was already heaping full. Full of her stuff. It’s like, she died, and within days most
of her belongings were tossed in the trash.
And the dumpster guys have come.
It’s gone.
Now this was stunning to me. First is the nature of my
possessions. Am I just filling my house
and garage and storage units so that when I’m gone the fam can get a huge dumpster
and be rid of them? But what was truly stunning
was: I didn’t know this lady. We
have gotten to know some of our neighbors, but this lady, just two houses down,
we had done little more than wave at her as she drove by going somewhere.
In Rom. 13:10 the word “neighbor” is plesion. The Jews consider any other Jew to be their
neighbor. But Jesus used the term of any
man irrespective of nation or religion with whom we live or whom we chance to
meet. Did I love my neighbor?
Further, am I asleep? It is high time to awake out of sleep; for
now our salvation is nearer than when we first believed. The night is far spent, the day is at
hand. Therefore let us cast off the
works of darkness, and let us put on the armor of light (13:11-12).
I am not trying to overload myself with guilt
here. But I also know how I think. Sometimes I think, “we pay more attention to
our neighbors than most Christians do.”
Do you know what that is? That is
self-righteousness. I actually am not smart
enough to be my own judge. I don’t know
what most Christians are doing. And I do
know that I am not finished with the matter of putting on the Lord Jesus Christ
and making no provision for the flesh.
I am not, at this point in my life, interested
in simply having a happy new year. I
want a “fullness of Christ” new year! I
want, by His grace, to lift high the banner of the cross. And I want it to happen in a real place among
the real people who surround me here.
Please pray for me that it might be so!
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