New Beginnings.

“New year, New me.”

When the clock strikes midnight on New Year's Eve, Happiness rings round everywhere. A joyful noise, a fanfare, a chorus of ‘this is our year’; ‘new year, new us; ‘cheers to 365 blank pages, let’s write them well!’.

The new year resolutions have been made. The diets have started. The gym memberships have been bought. The house has been Marie-Kondo(d), anything that doesn’t bring you joy - gone.

The bottom line is. New year, New me. Somehow, the change of date has magically transformed you and everything is better now. Who you were on December 31st is gone, You're a whole different person now. 

How’s that going for you? 

January. The month of mondays. 

January. The month that lasts a lifetime.

January. The month we thought would never end.

January is the month that makes or breaks the ‘new year, new me’ people. It's a marathon month. Most of us sprint out the gates, Full of gusto. However, we last a week with the resolutions/ diets/ etc. Then fall flat on our face. Only the determined or seasoned ‘athletes’ make it to the end.

February. A new beginning.

February. A breath of fresh air. 

February. A light at the end of the tunnel.

February is a welcome sight for most of us. We’ve army crawled our way through January. Barely made it. By the skin of our teeth. We look at it the same way we did NYE. We make the same promises or resolutions that were only made a mere 31 days ago.

February. A do-over month?

This pattern reminded me of the film Groundhog Day, Being stuck in an endless loop and never really breaking free. But, Do we really want to keep making the same promises to ourselves or whomever, over and over and over again until… when? Until, We either give up or eventually complete them. Only to begin yet again and start the process over.

Surely there’s got to be more to life than this endless cycle, this groundhog day, this monotony of self let-downs and false starts. Re-starting the clock whenever the date changes or when we feel like it really…

How’s it working out for you so far?

When I was younger me and my friends used to yell “PLOT TWIST!”. Whenever something happened that we didn’t like, whenever something didn’t go our way, whenever we broke up with an ex, whenever we got bad news, whenever anything happened basically we’d shout it. It became our catch phrase. 

However, once we yelled out “PLOT TWIST!”. We made sure to do a 360 degree twist and move on from whatever was getting us down. In a sense, Stop. Drop. Roll. Away from the fire. 

Many people treat the new year like my ‘Plot Twist’. Shoving away the past, turning a blind eye to the last year, moving into the coming year as a ‘new me’. 

“Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.”

1 Peter 1v3

But the only plot twist there truly is, the only new beginning out there, Is the one we have been given through Jesus.

No matter how hard we try. We will always fail. We live in a fallen world, full of sin, sorrow and suffering. That’s the reality of our situation. 

No matter how hard we try. He will always win. His death on the cross is the victory God planned for us. That’s the beauty of the ‘solution’ ~ Jesus. 

We can make all the resolutions. We can go on all diets. We can join all the gyms. We can start again as many times as we want. The solution doesn’t lie with us though, We can’t do anything. It’s all been done for us. 

Could Jesus be your next ‘resolution’? 

When Jesus died the worst death imaginable. He took all our burdens upon him. Past, Present and Future. So that we can have the new start we are longing for. If we stop flying solo and team up with him. Allow him to be the one to do the changing and us to be the ones changed.

The difference is when we do our ‘new me’ with Jesus everything changes. He is the one that gives us strength, to get through the day. He is the one that gives us wisdom, to make the right choices. He is the one that gives us power, to overcome our weaknesses. 

Jesus Christ, is the one that died. Was buried. Rose again the third day. For you, for me. So that we can have a new beginning. A true new beginning.

January is now over. February is underway. The question now remains…

Who’s yelling your ‘plot twist’?

~ By Lynn Graham.