As fireworks bombarded and lit up the New Year’s Eve sky, I wondered. I wondered what the fireworks mean. Are they celebrating the year past? Are they celebrating their gratitude that the year has passed and are hopeful the next year might not be as bad as the last? Or are they simply celebrating it is now a New Year full of possibility?
Most likely what is being done is simply a New Year’s tradition of many, many years past with little or no thought regarding the fireworks’ connection to hope, regret, beginnings, or endings. Or, perhaps the meaning, if any, is dependent upon the individual person or the person’s past year or the future envisioned by an individual person. Do you look up into the New Year’s sky with deep thoughts? Or like me do you mostly appreciate the fireworks, or, instead, dislike them because they make the dog a nervous wreck?
Certainly some years are better than others. We probably realized that even pre-pandemic times. Some years begin with very specific hopes or goals for the coming months. A new birth, graduation, a new job, retirement, or a special trip planned.
Yet in looking back, most years contain ups and downs; success and failures, hopes dashed, hopes come to fruition, and surprises, some upsetting and some quite joyous. A lot can and does happen in twelve months, 365 days, 8,760 hours, 525,600 minutes, and, do your own math on how many seconds….
A lot of time; quite a lot can occur.
However, in the greeting, “Happy New Year” it seems what, for the Christian, might be the most operative of the three words is “New”. Most everyone wants a happy year. Those who begin a new year are quite aware of its length. For very young ones, the year seems like forever. For adults, the time seems to go faster with each passing year.
But “New”. Many want actually a year with little or no changes. Life seems to be moving along okay, let’s just keep it going that way.
Christians are aware God is at work in every year. Where God is at work, life is not static. There is always something new. Sometimes the newness comes as unpleasant recognition of something we need to do or change. Sometimes the newness comes as complete surprise and gift, removing or lessening some fear or burden. What is certain is that God is busy. God is busy listening to the prayers raised. God is busy responding, it seems, not to exactly what people may want, but to what they may need. God is busy responding to allow us to be those whom God created so we might be able to try to figure some things out for ourselves.
In the early days of 2022, we need reminding God’s calendar is not our calendar. God does not use the Julian calendar, the Roman calendar, the Byzantine or any other calendar. Instead of focusing on months, days, years or minutes, God’s focus is on God’s people: you and me and the billions of others gathered on Planet Earth. God’s hope is less for some future, and more for the present as relates to us. The Rolling Stones may have sung, “Time is on my Side” but for God, all time is opportunity for God to act. Time, for God is opportunity to relate, to bring and do graceful things. It is not that time is on God’s side, it is for us, that most of all, God is on our side. Sounds like Happy New Year to me!