It takes just 2-3 seconds to say the words, but have you ever stopped to reflect on just how many seconds will make up the year 2017? There are 60 seconds in a minute, 3600 seconds in an hour, 86,400 seconds every day, 604,800 in a week and 31,536,000 seconds in a year. That’s a lot of seconds!
Have you ever thought about how much can happen in second? Have you ever reflected on how many of these seconds you will not be happy? It only takes a second for your life to be totally changed. In a year full of seconds, anything can happen at any second! So, if we’re going to proclaim “Happy New Year”, there are some things to keep in mind.
To begin with, we are not always sure how to define happiness. For a lot of people happiness depends on their happenings. If their happenings happen to happen the way they happen to want their happenings to happen, they are happy! So they spend their time organizing their happenings to make sure everything happens the way they want it to happen. But, if their happenings don’t happen to happen the way they happen to want their happenings to happen, they are unhappy!
We have to come to terms with the fact that we may not always be able to control our happenings! One of the great myths about humanity is that we are in charge; nothing could be further from the truth. We are not masters of our destiny.
There is a year full of seconds ahead of us. When we recognize the frailty of our humanity and limitations of our own strength; when we come to grips with the realization we cannot regulate or escape these inevitable, irresistible factors of life, God is waiting. He says, ‘look this way for a moment; put your trust in me’. If there is any rhyme, any reason to life, it is because there a transcendent God who is working in all of our seconds, in all of our circumstances to accomplish His purposes for our lives / in this world.
Daniel 5:23 says it is God who holds in his hand your life and all your ways.
If nothing transcends the circumstances of life, if the here and now is all we have; if we can only find happiness by manipulating and escaping the inevitable, irresistible events that only take a second to come into our lives, we will wear ourselves out! God would say, there is a better way.
Ecclesiastes 3:11 says of God: He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end.
When we begin to realize that God can work in and through and despite all the irresistible, inevitable things of life then there is a possibility of a deeply rooted sense of well-being that is far removed from a superficial happiness that comes from getting our happenings to happen the way we happen to want our happenings to happen. If we can learn to trust God and begin to recognize that he can bring a certain beauty into all circumstances of life then there is hope of a ‘Happy New Year’.
I trust the New Year will give you opportunity to recognize that whatever inevitable, irresistible realities of
life that come your way, there is a God who is bigger and mightier than any circumstance you will face. As we walk in faith we can know He is at work in our lives; we can rest in His grace and love. For me, that’s enough!
May it be so for the people of Valley and in the lives of those we love.
Happy New Year!