A New Year Filled with Hope

My daughter and her family are currently in Japan. When I spoke to her on New Year's Eve, she said they'd be getting up to watch the first sunrise of 2021 -- a Japanese custom known as "hatsuhinode." The Japanese believe it brings good fortune in the new year. Cynical me wondered how many people were watching the sun rise a year ago. 

This has been a year for the books -- or maybe it should be redacted. Never mind the newsworthy stuff, even the things my friends and family have experienced this year are like nothing I've ever known. My prayer list is longer than it's ever been, with so much sickness and sorrow, so many lives turned upside down, and so much uncertainty. And yet, we hope. The same people who were jobless and hopeless in August are now filled with hope that flipping the page on a calendar will make all things new. The same folks who begged for relief in May will breathe a sigh of relief when the big hand and little hand converge at an apex and tomorrow will be. Why? What is the big deal? How can 11:59 be all that's wrong with the world, and 12:01 be rife with possibility? What does one second mean to the whole of humanity?

Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Not when it comes to the things we've seen this past three hundred sixty-five days. COVID cares nothing for time. Racial tensions don't wait for a certain time of day to boil over. Natural disasters, sexual misconduct and trafficking, elections, impeachments and bankruptcies do not rest on one single tick or tock. And yet, we hope. We hope that one second will change the course of history; we hope that in less time that it takes to pop the cork on a champagne bottle, all the dismal memories of the past year will be laid to waste and goodness will burst forth. We hope that a moment in time will change the years of bias, greed, underhandedness, glutting and gutting, raping and pillaging that have destroyed our earth and destroyed one another, and brought us to this place. We hope, in that one...single...second that propels us into a new day, a new year. 

How foolish we can be. Not because we hope, not at all. We were made for Hope. But that's Hope with a capital "H". In Psalm 71:5, the writer declares, "For You are my hope, O Lord God; You are my trust from my youth." God set the sun and moon in the sky to mark out the days; God is the Author and Keeper of time itself. We simply measure it and decide what type of stewards we will be over it. And our stewardship should be determined by our hope. Psalm 146:5 says, "Blessed is he whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the Lord his God." Placing our hope in the Lord means surrendering to His design, stewarding our time in such a manner as to bring glory to His name, and having full confidence He is working for our good. Placing hope in a "1" over a "0", or an AM over a PM, or a Friday over a Thursday is as silly as -- well, believing that watching the sun obey its Creator will bring good fortune. 

I will be waking early to watch the sun rise. Not to seek some reward, but to thank God for another year, to ask for more opportunities to bring Him glory, and to dedicate these next twelve months -- however events materialize -- to Him and Him alone. I pray your new year is filled with Hope!