New Years Walk....Really?

At the beginning of my sixty ninth year I realize the world is full of beginnings and endings.  A few days ago, my good friend and neighbor’s life ended.  Immediately, I began walking without his voice, presence and relationship.  More Interesting I am caught by the fact there will not ever be an end for him again.  He is beginning the beginning of what I call eternal beginning. I begin a new year with a certain hope—another year, another chance, a new day.  But I will carry with me some of the same fears, the same longings, the same resolutions.  And I ask myself; is there ever really anything new about a new year? 

I remember a particular time in the past feeling so broken that its shards seemed to reach well into my future.  I saw the end of a difficult situation, but I could not see a beginning unmarred by the residue of the past.  "Is there really such a thing as a new day?" was the question I held in total dejection.  A friend gave me the following scripture and asked me to hold it instead:

"But this I call to mind,
       and therefore I have hope:
    The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases,
       his mercies never come to an end;
    they are new every morning;
       great is your faithfulness.
    'The LORD is my portion,' says my soul,
       'therefore I will hope in him'" (Lamentations
3:21-24).

Spoken in a time of exile, I imagine these words were as pungent for Israel as they were for me.  The writer of Lamentations held fast to the assurance of things new, even in the midst of a situation that blinded him from what that could even mean.  In all of the sin and sorrow surrounding him, it would not have been unreasonable for him to admit that he saw no way out.  With all the damage that had been done, with the uncertainty of exile, and the finality of a destroyed Jerusalem, I can’t believe anyone would have blamed him for seeing new mornings as nothing but a promise of more of the same. 

But this was not the lament on his lips.  Written in the style of an ancient funeral song, the writer's words, though consumed with death, call to the Lord by name:  The steadfast love of Yahweh never ceases, his mercies never come to an end.  Another translation reads, “Because of Yahweh's great love we are not consumed; his mercies are new every morning.  I imagine in my mind, what the writer saw in the midst of his own lamentation is that only God can truly make a beginning.  I haven’t given very much thought to this but the new mornings, new years, in and of themselves, are useless and worse than useless if they are not seen as belonging to the one who makes all things new.

And often, it is in the midst of a definitive ending that God brings new beginnings to life.  In a poem called "Ash Wednesday," T.S. Eliot describes redemption as a figure moving about ashes and endings.

The new years walk, restoring
Through a bright cloud of tears, the years, restoring
With a new verse the ancient rhyme.  Redeem
The time.  Redeem
The unread vision in the higher dream.

I’ve experienced a restoration before in a new years walk, something hopeful in a new day, precisely because there is a coming new day.  Perhaps the hope promised in new mornings, the assurance of new mercies and new beginnings, is only a hint of the promise of a new earth.  In this higher dream, God is the dreamer, redeeming worlds, redeeming time; God’s redemption is the great love that prevents me from being consumed.  

I think it no coincidence that the ending chapters of Scripture are aimed at describing the beginning of something more.  Depicting the vision of "a new heaven and a new earth," John reports a voice crying out from the throne saying, "See, the home of God is among mortals.  He will dwell with them as their God; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them; he will wipe every tear from their eyes.  Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away" (Revelation 21:3-4).   

I remember a phrase you used, quit often dad:  “This is the day that the Lord hath made.”  I want to acknowledge and respond in ways that this day is new because it is a day made by the God of new beginnings, the God who came to live with me and everyone else.  Christ is the portion that God extends every morning.  I implore my spiritual eyes to behold Him come, for He will make all things new.