The Death of Another Year

The world seems to die at the end of every year, the northern part of it anyway.

Imagine you were an alien visiting earth from a planet that had tropical climates all year long, and you arrived in the spring and watched the seasons change from spring to summer, then from summer to fall, and finally from fall to winter. Alarms would probably go off in that oversized, alien brain of yours. “Earth is dying,” you would think. And who could blame you? Nothing about winter indicates that the resurrection of spring is around the corner.

Winter is bleak and cold. I’m reminded of the opening lines from Thomas Hardy’s “The Darkling Thrush,” which go,

I leant upon a coppice gate
When Frost was spectre-grey,
And Winter’s dregs made desolate
The weakening eye of day.
The tangled bine-stems scored the sky
Like strings of broken lyres,
And all mankind that haunted nigh
Had sought their household fires.

The shortest day of the year is coming up this week. Before there was Christmas, the Romans celebrated this day as the birth of the sun. It was as if the previous year’s sun had died, only to be replaced by an infant light. When Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire, the feasting and merriment that went along with this time of the year shifted to a celebration of the birth of a person instead of a star—the birth of Jesus Christ.

Like the Romans, we think of the death of the year in December. We speak of Old Man Winter and picture the New Year as a baby wearing a top hat.

All of this reminds me that I can’t do anything to change 2011. It was what it was. The successes and the failures of the past remain in the past, and there is nothing I can do to either erase them or bring them back.

But, Lord willing, a New Year is about to be born. Will we make the most of it? Will we stretch ourselves beyond the limits of the previous year so that there will be growth in the body of Christ? Will we bring the gospel to the lost? Will we help the needy and visit the sick? Individually, will we mature in our faith and prepare ourselves for the appointed time when we will stand before God in judgment? With God’s help, we will.

Let’s put last year behind us. Good things are around the corner. Happy New Year!