In yesterday’s Sunday newspaper, the phrase “Unhappy Anniversary” grabbed my attention. Not an article about our 9/11 commemoration, it was about Japan’s 3/11 half-year unhappy anniversary of the tsunami that killed 24,000. Immediately I thought of all the unhappy events this year that will be forever annually commemorated: the Joplin, Missouri Tornado; the senseless mass murder of 84 teenagers in Norway. “Unhappy Anniversaries"... those dates we hate to remember—untimely deaths; floods, fires—events that changed lives forever.
But Paul’s assuring words remind us that we are not defined by unhappy histories. Rather, our co-death and co-resurrection with Jesus brings us into the ‘newness’ of life (Rom. 6:4). It seems to me that the “newness of life”—a word, by the way, that defies logic—demands that we live in a new reality where God causes all things to work together for good, where history does not control us, and where the hope of a new heaven and a new earth is more real to us than the unhappy one we’re living in.
In fact, when we live in the new reality, outside of time and earthly 'dates', we live in the promise of endless “days” of “goodness, peace, joy” (Rom. 14:17). And finally, reflect on this: “Do not call to mind the former things, or ponder things of the past, for I am about to do something new. See, I have already begun! Do you not see it?” (Is. 43:18-19)
Greg,
ReplyDeleteThe Cross has indeed declared that our traumatic past has lost its power to define us. By way of contrast, the Cross also represents the truth that the favor of yesterday's blessings are merely steps in the progression to conform us to the image of Christ. While we tend to bask in the memory of "the good old days" of personal or corporate revivals that we witnessed, the destination to where God is taking us through the path of today's events is worth much more of our attention than our past, good or bad.
Stan
There are enough 'new' things God is doing to keep us pretty occupied! -- Greg
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