Christmas is over, the year is coming to an end and we are stepping into the promise of the new year. Sometimes it’s easy to draw a line under what has been and know we are truly starting again, but for many of us, the new year heralds a season of continuing struggle. For Joseph and Mary there was certainly great uncertainty ahead. They’d made it to Bethlehem, their special baby had been born, they’d had the incredible visit of the shepherds with their stories of angelic choirs...the first step of their new lives had been navigated but what next? What would their future look like and what on earth would happen tomorrow?
Mary and Joseph were pioneering a path that had never been walked before. The reality of God with them in human form. Their responsibility was to cherish and nurture that new life, constantly being vigilant to protect it from Satan’s attack and to be prepared to hear and respond to God’s counsel and direction, even if it meant abandoning all they knew to go and live in a foreign land.
The presence of Jesus in both their lives and ours, heralds a profound newness that goes deeper than the questions of what our new year will hold. Like with Mary and Joseph, when we become Christians, a new reality is born in our lives the moment we open our hearts to God. Paul expresses it in 2 Corinthians 5:17 ‘Therefore if anyone is in Christ he is a new creation. The old has passed away, behold the new has come.’ (ESV) We have the presence of God within us, the power of the old things has been broken forever by Jesus and we’ve been released to live life in a new way with the Holy Spirit daily bringing us new revelation and the power to live from a different centre, no longer the old way of being pulled this way and that by our conflicting desires and fears but from the centre of our hearts where Jesus now dwells. We can also know his daily counsel and guidance. We too are fighting against Satan and all his attempts to derail the life of God within us.
I love the way Father God kept bringing encouragement to Mary and Joseph even after the birth of Jesus was behind them. The prophetic words of Simeon and Anna in the temple, the visit of the Magi with their amazing gifts to Jesus. These things were unexpected and not part of the old order of life and worship for ordinary people. But the coming of Jesus had opened that door to God being present with them in the daily experience of receiving God given encouragement, hearing his voice and seeing his power at work on their behalf.
So as we step into this new year, whether we are doing that with excitement or dread, the Lord is encouraging us to embrace afresh what it means to have the new life of Jesus within us. Like me, you may have been a Christian for years but every day can be a new beginning where we start to experience his presence in fresh ways. He is there wanting to bring us gifts to encourage us and confirm our calling. Those gifts may come as unexpectedly as they did to Mary and Joseph but the key is to expect them and when they come to receive them with joy. It says about Mary that ‘she treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart.’ (Luke2:19) Will we choose at the start of this New Year to treasure and ponder all the ways God reveals himself to us? The encouragements, the gifts of his love and the promise of hope that he is with us always? Like Mary and Joseph, we are living in the realm of the supernatural made natural. Whatever the literal new year holds, let’s walk it with Jesus alongside us with our ears open to God’s voice and our hearts ready to respond to his counsel. Far more than New Year’s Eve fireworks which flash and then are gone, the Light of the World will always be with us and the more we open our hearts to him the more that Light will be revealed in all its glory to all around. I long for that.
