If there ever was a year I was glad to see kicked to the curb, 2016 was it.<\/p>\n
I think of it as the year of cancer. It was, largely, a lost year. Thanks to the drugs and the tune-out thing of sickness, I don\u2019t even remember big parts of it.<\/p>\n
I remarked to a lifelong friend that my precious granddaughter was born in 2016, and one of my sons got married, giving us a wonderful new daughter. She answered that I really would have had a good year, if it hadn\u2019t been for the cancer.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s a little bit like saying that if it hadn\u2019t been for the iceberg, the Titanic would have had a great crossing. Nope. So far as I\u2019m concerned, 2016 was the year of cancer and an execrable presidential election in which, no matter who won, We the People lost.<\/p>\n
New Year\u2019s Eve felt like relief to me.<\/p>\n
Life goes on, one day falling unnoticed into the next without remark or notice. We grow up, grow old and move toward death in a seamless glide that makes the changes seem inconsequential. For our sanity, we must find ways to draw lines, to mark spots on our long passage through the years where we pause, take notice of what\u2019s happening, and begin again.<\/p>\n
New Years\u2019 Day is one such place. The old year passing and the new year beginning are in reality just theoretical constructs we humans have given ourselves to aid our understanding of what our lives are about. We need places to begin again. We need second chances, new beginnings and the hope of fresh starts.<\/p>\n
I felt relief when 2016 slid into history. It was like a load lifted. It signaled the end of the year of cancer and the beginning of a hopeful new epoch in which I can get stronger and move into whatever is left of my life without the baggage of the time just past.<\/p>\n
It meant something to me, and it gave something to me. It gave me the promise of a new beginning, a page turned, a painful passage done and done.<\/p>\n
That is the magic of second chances. It is the power of hopeful beginnings.<\/p>\n
It is exactly what every Christian possesses each day they live and on into eternity. T. S. Elliot wrote that being a Christian means that we never have to say goodbye, not even when someone dies. That is true. As King David said of his dead son, \u201cI will go to him.\u201d<\/p>\n
All Christians know this hope, this power of eternal life that lifts us out of the mire of our finiteness. But we sometimes lose sight of the fact that this transcendence is ours now, as we plod through our days in this world.<\/p>\n
Christianity is the message of limitless new beginnings, of second chances for the asking. It is the hope \u2014 the Hope \u2014 of never having to say \u201cthere is nothing I can do.\u201d<\/p>\n
For Christians, there is no fate in which things are \u201cwritten\u201d before they\u2019ve happened. There is no karma that comes back and bites us from our past. There are actions and consequences, and there is forgiveness and second chances. Christians never have to wallow in the ugly, sin-spotted misery of their failures from the past. They can \u2014 always \u2014 begin again in Christ. (Read the rest\u00a0here<\/a>.)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"2016 was an\u00a0annus horribilis. It was also a turning point, for me personally, for Christianity in America, and for America herself. Here\u2019s hoping that 2017 is a better year, a year in which we take advantage of the second chance it offers us to renew our faith and our faithfulness, to go back to Jesus […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1155,"featured_media":30714,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33,726,41,7324,1],"tags":[7917,2333,7849,4929],"class_list":["post-31077","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-america","category-following-christ","category-politics","category-the-political-heresy-2","category-uncategorized","tag-7917","tag-following-jesus","tag-jesus","tag-political-heresy"],"yoast_head":"\n
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