The NEW of New Years

2014 began at midnight on January first and that New Year was ushered in with toasts, hugs, kisses and hopes of things being better. With a New Year there comes a sense of a "fresh start", "do over", "a clean slate", of a "new day dawning."

Everything is NEW in a new year. There is a sense of optimism that old mistakes will be forgotten and new opportunities will result in positive progress in life's journey forward.

We resolve not to revert back to old ways but to follow a new path that will lead to offering rewards.

I am reminded that the Hebrew scholar turned Christian, Saul of Tarsus, eventually known as Paul the Apostle, explained being a Christian much like entering a new year. He wrote in his second letter to the Corinthians:

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. Old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new (2 Cor. 5:17).

Being a follower of Jesus makes one's life NEW and notice the words that said old things have passed away. When you make that decision to follow Jesus and are baptized, then your "old things" do not matter to God anymore; you are NEW.

Doesn't sound possible? Just look at the life of the man who wrote those words. In the book of Acts where his life is chronically starting in the 8th chapter, Paul hated Christians, went throughout the region putting them in prison and in at least one case consented to a man's death. Then he saw Jesus and he arose and was baptized…. immediately he preached the Christ in the synagogues, that 'He is the Son of God' (cf. Acts 9:1-22). Paul was made new and his old things passed away.

And once you're "made new" you don't have to do it again every New Year. That's the real NEW of New Years.

I'd like to help you discover how you can be made new; email me at bbrant@heraldoftruth.org or join in the conversation on my blog at www.hopeforlife.org