Hope For When You Wish You Could Just Start Over

The ball drops, glasses clink, and cheers raise in unison for the new year. What is it in us that is so desperate for something new? Don’t get me wrong. I love a clean slate, a blank canvas, and wide open spaces. But if we are honest, the changing of the calendar doesn’t actually bring anything new with it except the hope of better.

Eating better. Loving better. Doing better.

As much as we try to ignore it, threats of sickness remain. Death is still eminent. Temptations to indulge continue. Our performance keeps us in bondage. Motivations and intentions can be refreshed, but our stories don’t change just because the numbers on the clock do.

If only we could just start over. But life is not a game of Pac-Man or Madden NFL, where one ends and the new begins. So, how can we experience newness in the middle of our story? Let these words from Isaiah encourage you and provide you with lasting hope for an eternal newness.

As a refresher, Isaiah was a prophet who lived in Jerusalem. His message was remarkably one of warning and wooing as he not only cautions the children of Israel about God’s judgement through the nations of Assyria and Babylon in response to their idol worship, but also prophesies that there is no reason to fear, for God will use this time of destruction to do a new thing. He will bring a new king to rule over a new Israel to bring new and lasting peace.

“‘I am the LORD, your Holy One, the Creator of Israel, your King.’ Thus says the LORD, who makes a way in the sea, a path in the mighty waters, who brings forth chariot and horse, army and warrior…Remember not the former things nor consider the things of old.

Behold, I am doing a new thing…” (Isaiah 43:15-19 ESV)

Do you hear that?

Justice and mercy. Destruction and hope. Death and life. This is how we, too, are created new.

The new thing Isaiah prophesies about in Chapter 42 is the very King we celebrate at Christmas. Yet God is also promising to make all things new once and for all with a new heavens and a new earth when Jesus returns (Revelation 21).

So, if you are sitting in January with the list of things you long “to do better”, energized at the new year ahead of you—I get it. I am too. But if you are also sitting in January with hearts still grieving, wills still waning, and emotions still weighing—I get it. I am too.

Even on the days we feel the same or even worse than we did before, we can be reminded God is doing a new thing in us just as He is doing a new thing in all of creation, and he will make a way for it. We are a part of his plan of renewal even as we rest, because we trust him to complete the work he started in our lives (Philippians 1:6).

If you want to do better this year, but feel discouraged that you can’t start over, remember there is a God who is working something new. He is a God who renews, regenerates, redeems, restores, and rebuilds.

So, this new year—sing to the Lord a new song (Isaiah 42:10), and take heart—he most assuredly is doing a new thing in us and through us for the good of his whole creation.