A Fresh Start

There really is something about starting fresh that is so appealing. It's why so many of us cram the time between Christmas and New Year's full of...making space. Getting rid of clutter. Making new schedules. Purchasing new exercise equipment. We spend the time trying to make our lives accommodate our goals. After all, who wants to fail by February...again? 

But that's kind of the thing, isn't it? That's why Christmas is so much better as a new beginning than New Year's is. That's why we ought to spend this time, these few days, embracing the manger more than chilling the champagne. 

Because whatever promise you've made to yourself this year, the odds are that you're not going to keep it. Whatever you've decided to change, there's a high probability that by the time a few weeks have passed, you probably won't have changed it at all. You'll be right back where you started. 

We do it every year. Some of us do it multiple times per year. Those of us who are very skilled can fit several backslides into a single week. I'll just be honest and confess - the things that I don't love about myself have a way of rearing their ugly head right about the time I'm starting to feel like maybe I'm a good person after all. It's just the way that being human goes...in our own power. 

When we hinge our change, our growth, our maturation on something like the calendar, this can be extremely discouraging. And defeating. 

We make a resolution around New Year's to do this or that thing, to be better about this or that, to stop or start this or that. By February (and that's being generous), most of us are back in our old patterns, our old ways, our old defeats. And we look at the calendar, and we say, well...I failed. Totally blew it. This year isn't going to be the year. 

We throw out the whole year around the fortieth day of it. We throw away another three hundred twenty-some days because, according to the calendar, we didn't make it very far. We'll try again next year. Some of us start making our new year's resolutions as early as March because we're pretty sure that we have figured out why we failed this time and what we'll need next time to do it better and actually succeed. Now, all we need is for the calendar to change again. 

Contrast that with Christmas. Here's a baby in a manger who has come to change everything. We can come to see Him; He bears grace. Something about the incarnate God gives us hope. Something about it inspires us to be better persons. We want to be worthy of the condescension of God, that He would come to us. We don't want anything in our lives that would make us go, say, jump in a bush. (Just for an example.) Something about the baby Jesus stirs us. 

Then, we mess up. We always do. It's our fallen nature. We fail. We fail ourselves. We fail God. We break our own promises that we made, to ourselves and to others. 

Because of Christmas, though, the promise is right there. We can come back to Jesus in the flesh any time. He's here. That hope, that inspiration, that stirring...it doesn't stop just because the calendar turns. It doesn't wait for it to turn again. Jesus was born and now, He lives. Every single day. We never have to throw out tomorrow because we messed up today because there's nothing so special about it - today is tomorrow is the day after that because our Lord is come. He's here. For the new day that is dawning.

And the one that is dawning after that. 

Christmas, friends, is the change we've been seeking. It's the hope we can hold onto. It's the gift that gives us the option to actually change our lives. 

Even if we mess it up a few (thousand) times.