All the 'New Year' Stuff - How Does it Sit with You?
"The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; His mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness." (Lamentations 3:22-23)
"This is the day that the LORD has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it." (Psalm 118:24)
Those verses, I am aware of. I know they’re there, somewhere in That Book. In fact, there in there at the reference points I’ve given after the quotations. They exist. Scriptural promises about God’s mercies being new each day and a reference to each day being (effectively) a gift from God in which we can choose (if we decide to) to rejoice and be glad in.
Considering the content of this writing, where is there a Bible verse that speaks of the importance of the New Year? Is there one? To my knowledge, there isn’t…but I might have missed something. And yet, us Christians (along with those who do not sit under that categorisation of human belief) so often make such a thing of this ‘New Year’ thing as if it were somehow an opportunity for the old to be gone and the new to come. Why do we do that? On one level, I understand how it came about, but I’m now questioning the wisdom of it as an approach to life.
If ‘now’ is really all there is (it is all there is), is it not a better approach to treat each new day as a new day and have that opportunity for what has past to be gone and what is now to be lived 365 (or 366) times each year rather than the once a year ‘New Year’ nonsense? Does not the once a year ‘New Year’ thing put us under too much self-imposed pressure for the year ahead? I am of the mindset currently that yes, it does. I think it is far too much pressure. What if we’ve messed up on our resolutions or aims by January the 12th? Is the rest of the year then a write-off (to put it in very damaged car terms)? Isn’t that daft? Does it not then put us on an ‘already failed’ footing, which for many of our species then results in a resignation to the fact we’ve failed again which is then related (in our twisted thinking) to mean we are worthless and useless? Oh my. We need to stop. I really think we need to stop! We’re not worthless or useless. None of us are that.
I also think there is waaaaay too much emphasis on an analysis of what has happened during the past year. I, for one, do not need to go over perceived successes or failures of the past year as some kind of self-analysis tool and neither do I need to wallow in nostalgia. Oh my. It would make me ill. For some, maybe that’s all helpful and they get to choose if that is something they want to engage with. Lovely. If it works for you, do it. For me, however, it isn’t. I do the reflective thing all the time anyway. I’m naturally like that. I am frequently (possibly nearly constantly) noticing, analysing, adjusting and exploring my ways, my behaviours, my patterns of living and all the processes I engage with as part of my survival techniques. I do that nearly all the time. So, I do not need to do some kind of summative assessment about it all at the end of a year, do I?
I used to. Always. I used to feel it was even a kind of Christian duty to look back and be grateful for all that has been and to even seek what might be to come. And I would do this through the use of overly-spiritualised processes (as I now view them). I’d attend and be fully participatory in prayer gatherings and in (possibly sometimes real and sometimes pseudo) prophetic gatherings.
I now have (at least) two huge issues with that approach. The first, I’ve already mentioned but will re-write. Biblically, each new day is new and a fresh start and an opportunity to be grateful, to reflect and to proactively look forward. We get to make a fresh start every single day. Every day. I’m taking that over the once-a-year thing. The second of my huge issues with it is trickier to explain but (we’ve (kinda) met, right?) I’ll try with an explanation anyway.
I did the thing (when I prioritised the Christian gathering approach around ‘New Year’) where I’d intently listen to what God might be ‘saying’ along with all the seemingly like-minded people around me. Did I ever hear anything from Him? Maybe, maybe not. But that’s not really the point. Making this ‘event’ at the end of one year and the start of the next kind of demonstrated that we believed God’s communication was more important or more poignant because it was at the end of one year and was beginning the next. Did people say that? No, and I’m sure that if they’d been asked, the people present at such gatherings would say it was important to listen to anything God may be ‘saying’ at any time. That is what they would say (and what me ‘then me’ would have said too), but my point is that it wasn’t what I thought I was witnessing. I analyse all I see all the time as my way of working out life and trying to fathom out a bit more about us humans and how we behave along with how on Earth I’m supposed to try to function within all of it (with my ‘wiring’ as it is). And I am very sure I was seeing an elevation of importance about hearing from God at the end of and start of each year.
Can we momentarily stand back and look at that? Just briefly. Can God’s voice (however that is ‘heard’ or ‘seen’ or ‘experienced), matter more or be more important at any single point in time compared to any other point? I kind of treated it like it was but I now believe that concept is utter nonsense. The value of anything God says at any time is no more important because of when it is communicated. Surely, anything God may ‘say’ cannot be of lesser importance or of more importance based on when it is ‘heard’. Hearing from God isn’t limited to particular ways, means or times, right? The fact that the Bible has this up-coming verse in it gives some weight to that point, doesn’t it?
The heavens declare the glory of God;
the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
2 Day after day they pour forth speech;
night after night they reveal knowledge.
3 They have no speech, they use no words;
no sound is heard from them.
4 Yet their voice[b] goes out into all the earth,
their words to the ends of the world. (Psalm 19: 1-4)
I can see that each ‘New Year’ brings (maybe initially inadvertently and subconsciously, on the part of people who decided it would be a good way forwards to mark the passing of time from one year to the next) opportunities to reflect and to project forwards. I’m not saying that’s all bad as an approach, but I am saying that I think there can be significant ‘damage’ available to individuals and groups of people through the overuse of that approach. It can (and I think does) distract from the fact that we are never bound by the ‘year’ time frame. Each new day is a new day without the need to store up all the good, the bad and the ugly events of the past for some kind of end of year dissection process or of forcing false hopes onto the future.
For any of you who have been reading other articles I have written, you’ll have picked up that the ‘now’ theme keeps recurring in my world and life view. It is also a very present theme in the writings and teachings of those far more qualified and intelligent than I am (not that we need to compare, but I have done for now) in their fields concerning psychological understanding and mental health therapies, and it is a key part of proactive well-being foci (you may prefer 'focusses', I don't!). It is a theme that reoccurs within Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) where there is a heavy emphasis on ‘the present’. We have ‘now’. Recognising and living within ‘now’ is (I dare to say) vital, isn’t it? And although we may ‘know’ that in theory, we so often live in a way that proves we only ‘know’ the theory and don’t ‘live’ the reality, don’t we?
Each short day and night of 24 hours (approximately) duration is a far shorter cycle for us humans to appreciate each daily new beginning, with the various opportunities in it, even if they are tiny and are not world changing at first glance. I have found (for the first time) on this most recent ‘New Year’ that it is possible for me to live from 31st December and into 1st January without a heavy weight of disappointment internally, which is accompanied by depression and disillusionment in my very core about all that isn’t or all I wish hadn’t been. This year, I was free of it. For the first time in my memory, I was free of it. Why? Was it because I am less concerned about hearing God? Absolutely, no. Was it because I don’t want to learn from life and my experiences of life? No. Was it because I don’t want to hope for the future? No. Instead, it was simply because I was looking at and valuing ‘now’. And because of seeing ‘now’ as a thing to value, my emotions weren’t all messed up and confused and out of control.
This year, I actively coached myself (repeatedly) that there was nothing fancy or special that had to happen on the ‘switch-over’ point between the years. There was nothing I felt anyone must do for me or say to me that had to ‘be’ for me to manage the shift positively. There was nothing in me that needed to contact all the people I’ve not spoken to or heard from since last ‘New Year’. There was none of that. There was no great inner need to force some kind of validity in my ‘walk of faith’ by over-spiritualising the ‘switch-over’ and being seen to be engaging with additional prayer or whatever else, because I know (I am so sure) that my ‘walk of faith’ is perfectly valid and complete as it is, and as it is ever-evolving.
Happy New Year? Yeah, okay, fine, as long as you’re not drowning under a sense of not being good enough or of having ‘done enough’ or of whatever else hasn’t quite gone as you’d planned during the previous year.
However, there is also this, which I think is a better saying (even though it is unlikely to catch on in the mainstream world…and I’m not even sure I approve of it as a saying because it uses the ‘happy’ word and that’s something I believe is misunderstood and sought for as a thing when that’s not healthy for us either – we’ll probably ‘go there’ in another writing! But that small point aside, and in relation to the ‘Happy New Year’ tradition), instead, ‘Happy New Day’. Happy New Day for the 5th of January and for the 19th of March and for all the other days all the way up to the 31st December. And on the 1st of January in the next year, there too, ‘Happy New Day'.
"The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; His mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness." (Lamentations 3:22-23)
"This is the day that the LORD has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it." (Psalm 118:24)