Home | Previous Messages | Pastor Bill's Bio
A
Message from Pastor Bill – January 2012
January 2: Looking in Two Directions
— Ephesians 1:3-14
The party's over, and the bills have come due. "But there is hope for your future," says the Lord.
With the possible exception of April 15, January 2 is probably everyone's most dreaded day of the oh-so-new year. From the fourth Thursday in November through the first day of January, everyone in America parties. We stuff ourselves with turkey and dressing, homemade cookies and cakes, fresh bread and pecan pies given from family, friends and loving members. Once-a-year delicacies appear New Year's Eve—like smoked salmon, caviar and champagne (if your taste buds are grown up) and eggnog (if your taste buds are still young). We stay up late, party constantly, and spend lots of money, act nicer—and what do we get for it?
January 2
Overweight, exhausted, in debt and with the house a mess, we wake up the day after and find ... its January 2. After all those football games, and all those Frito-lays except for when Auburn, Georgia or Alabama plays in the national championship we realize it's now time to go on a diet, get on a budget, go back to work or school and pack up all those ornaments. (And why is it that all the Christmas decorations that looked so lovely in the middle of December suddenly look so tacky on January 2?)
Whose idea was it to put the big holiday season so early in the winter, anyway? January, February, March—all the really cold and dreary months must be faced head-on, with nothing except the appropriately sacrificial season of Lent to mark their passage. If we are going to make it through this year's—and every year's—January 2, we need to get a new perspective on this day.
The month of January takes its name from the Roman god Janus—a two-faced being, with each visage facing the opposite direction. Janus/January is a hinge time—a vantage point from which we can still see back into the past year and yet can also face forward and look expectantly at the year that lies ahead.
January 2 isn't just a day to sigh over "how far" we've got to go to lose that weight or pay those bills or see the spring flowers again. January 2 is also a vantage point from which we can plot the course of the New Year. Janus does look backward to the past, but he also looks forward to the future. January 2 must become the start of the hope month, not just the end of the party.
Is it January 2 in the life of your family? Is it January 2 in the life of this church? Where our hope, our model is in looking back to the past instead of the bright hope of the future?
Traditionally, we think of January 2 as the day we get back into the grind and hit the grindstone after the long holiday season. But for a moment, use the backward-looking face of Janus and see if you ever really got out of the grind. Were you faxing memos to clients or coworkers while heading "over the river and through the woods?
Is it January 2 in the life of your faith?
The writer of Ephesians takes a hopeful, January 2 forward-look at God's intentions for humanity and finds a remarkable vision, one which can usher us into this New Year. We may be assured that God has "a plan for the fullness of time, to gather up all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth" (Ephesians 1:10).
If past January 2s have seemed spiritually debilitating, we need to look with a spirit of hope at the "where to" of this year's January 2. Again, the author of Ephesians provides a positive image by proclaiming, "We who first hoped in Christ have been destined and appointed to live for the praise of his glory" (v.12, RSV).
It is January 2. The profligate party is over. But the coming year promises more than just dieting and dues-paying. Let us use this January 2 to begin creating a future built on hope. It is the first day of living a faith that looks backward to the evidences of God's great gift to us in Jesus Christ and forward to the day when God's plan "to gather up all things in him" will become a reality.
We have been given another New Year. Let us use it wisely, to the glory of God and dream together as a community of faith for what God has in store for all of us.
Do you have comments about this message? Please click here to e-mail me.
