Notes to growing Christians - What will 2012 bring?

‘Happy New Year’ is the wish of a thousand greeting cards and a multitude of personal messages.

It’s an expression of friendship, or aspiration and hope, not at all to be despised. But what would a truly happy 2012 look like for a disciple of Christ?

First, we have to remember that the New Year concept is a construction, to enable us human beings to make sense of time. In one sense, January 1 has no more significance for a new start than any other date on the calendar. But in Scripture, from the very beginning, God divides our human experience of time into days and weeks, months and years, in part to enable us to build in rhythms and patterns, to make sense of our human existence on earth. ‘He has put eternity into men’s hearts’ (Ecclesiastes 3.11), so that we can understand something of the concept, but cannot grasp its reality, because we are creatures bound by time.

Backwards and forwards

This helps us to remember and evaluate the past, as well as encouraging us to look forward to the future, although all we have to live in is the present. Again, these are human realities and we should neither deny nor despise them. So the rising anticipation that the New Year brings of the events it will contain, the Olympics or the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, along with all the personal and family milestones and their celebrations we look forward to, are among the ‘all things’ which God ‘gives us richly to enjoy’. Special occasions may well be important ingredients in a happy new year.

Yet only the most na•ve among us would imagine that 2012 will not have its share of troubles and disasters, conflict and turmoil. As James reminded his readers, ‘You do not know what tomorrow will bring’ (James 4.14). This is true at every level of our human life and experience, from the international to the personal. Where is happiness when the circumstances of life, usually not of our choosing at all, seem to be conspiring resolutely to stifle its very existence? Unless we Christians have something distinctive to say, or, more significantly, a different way to live, when the troubles of life threaten to engulf us, we have little to offer a broken, suffering, hurting world. And it needs to be more than ‘Smile — God loves you’.

We will not fear

I’ve been thinking a lot about Psalm 46 recently, which seems not surprisingly, to be written for just such a time as ours. You may remember its stirring opening: ‘God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble’. Against this affirmation of faith, the writer goes on to picture a world in total and cataclysmic upheaval. Earthquake, tsunami, typhoon and tempest are all in its opening paragraph. All the fixed points of life on planet earth are disintegrating (vv.2-3). But the psalmist’s declaration is, ‘We will not fear’, because of who God is and what he has become to us, his people. ‘The nations rage: the kingdoms totter’ — war, civil unrest, violence and riots are all included here. How can ‘happiness’ exist in a situation of such terror and fear?

Biblical joy

There is something much deeper — not just happiness, which may or may not ‘happen’, but what the Bible calls joy, which is the product of faith and the sibling of peace. In verses 4 and 5 the psalmist reflects on the fact that there is one centre of calm in a world of upheaval, the city of God, where he dwells with his people, as the supply of all their needs and the deliverer from all their enemies, including their fears. ‘The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our fortress’ is the assurance of verses 7 and 11.

That joy is the outcome of the knowledge that it is God who governs the world and not man, so that all that happens is the expression of his gracious providence. He brings desolations and he makes wars cease (vv.8-9). The way to the joy that is deeper than happiness is to stop fighting and let God be God in our lives and circumstances, whatever they may be (v.10). He will be exalted in all the changing scenes of life. He is the God of absolute power and steadfast love, so that our lives could not be in wiser, stronger or more loving hands, whatever tomorrow may serve up. That is the root of indestructible confidence and joy, in the midst of all that life may bring. It is to see that God really is in control, and, through all our challenges and anxieties, he comes himself to be our refuge and strength in the Lord Jesus crucified and risen. Happy New Year indeed!

David Jackman is the past President of the Proclamation Trust.