by Steve Olson
A New Year is upon us. Only a week ago we celebrated the birth of Christ and now we celebrate the birth of a new year. Ring out the old, bring in the new. Images of the old man with the scythe trudging out the back door as the baby swaddled in a bright banner announcing 2014 bounces in the front. Everything is new and we get a restart. I make my list of resolutions: lose some weight, exercise more, watch less television and really make a stab at writing that book. I’ll give more at church, spend more time with my children/parents, and volunteer more in the community. I’ll change. So often these promises fall by the wayside and by February we just mentally add them to next year’s list. We’ll do better next year.
One of the resolutions I manage to keep, at least for one day, is to walk more. On New Year’s Day, I take a walk. I do mange at least to make it to the 2nd. And even though 31 has simply changed to 1, everything seems different. There is still possibility and with a day off there is little to distract me. Well other than 18 hours of Bowl games. The calendar has flipped and the air seems brighter. Already the dark days of winter are lengthening; I am noticing that I’m getting closer to home at night before it gets completely dark.
One of my favorite places to walk is the beach; especially on the 1st of January. There is something about salt air and the lap of waves which seem the perfect metaphor for a clean start. The constant rush back and forth across polished rocks seems like a giant washing machine scrubbing the beach clean. I think about what it might have been like here twenty-one thousand years ago, these same waters washed the shore while in a stable thousands of miles away our Savior was born. Did waters pause if just for a moment, did crows, eagles, and coyotes sing “Glory!?”
The shore is littered with driftwood. Could one of these have been a tree still standing on some distant shore back then? When was the storm that might have toppled it and sent it adrift? How long have wind, water, salt and sand worked with a sculptor’s patience until this article of sublime beauty reached this place? It is different; it has changed. It looks as if this is what it was meant to be. If I take such pleasure from it, I think, how must its Creator regard it?
It took years for this piece of wood to become transformed. It may not even have made a resolution to itself that it wanted one day to become a beautiful piece of driftwood, but here it is.
We work so hard to make resolutions and for awhile we work hard to keep them. Some we do, some, not so much. A long time ago, in a tiny stable God began the work of remaking the world. That work continues today, and though by our efforts we may not always see it, the work, which God keeps at continues. We are not all that much different than the driftwood.. In His own time God works changes we may not even be aware of, transforming us from what we once were to what we are to become. Even death is not the end of the story where our Creator is concerned, and as the driftwood shows. Amazing beauty can be crafted after the familiar has been lost. God’s resolution, Incarnate in Christ, is the one resolution that is never broken.