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Each year, the new year offers both celebration and renewal. We come together in communities with family and friends to celebrate the old year’s passing and to welcome the new. Customarily this coming together offers a time for reflection regarding the past year and consideration of renewal in the new year. At times these new years’ resolutions are written, in the least talked about, but more often than not after the first month, resolve falters. But…

That is not the way you learned Christ! For surely you have heard about him and were taught in him, as truth is in Jesus. You were taught to put away your former way of life, your old self, corrupt and deluded by its lusts, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to clothe yourselves with the new self, created according to the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.¹

 

So we do not lose heart. Even though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day.²

After searching for words such as, new and renewal and then narrowing it to eighty-five passages from the Scriptures, I have been reminded of the importance of the truths of renewal by reading them again and again. The act of renewal is not a one-time act once a year, but a continual acknowledgement day by day and for some of us hour by hour.

Why not begin each day reflecting on the act of renewal, acknowledging thoughts and actions from the previous day that were less than what is characterized by a child of God? Articulate these thoughts and actions which you desire to put on, i.e. patience in place of impatience, joy and delight in place of melancholy and indifference with others.

How very gracious our Father in Heaven is —He sees us as we are, with love, hope, and confidence that each of us may grow to be more like Him. May this month be the beginning of months in each of our lives, “See, everything has become new!”³

Maryellen St. Cyr

Founder, Director of Curriculum

¹ Ephesians 4:20-24 (NRSV)

² 2 Corinthians 4:16 (NRSV)

³ 2 Corinthians 5:17 (NRSV)