We begin a New Year – 2022 A year filled with
opportunities, challenges and possibilities. We enter this New Year with the
same Savior by our side. The hymn writer encourages us, “With the Lord begin your task Jesus will direct it. For His aid and
counsel ask; Jesus will perfect it.” These are not idle or pointless words.
They are your reality. The Savior, whose birth we have just celebrated remains
ever present to guide and direct you. The calendar might change. The LORD’s
mercy will never change.
The coming of Jesus into our world changes everything.
For we do not have a God who was too proud to know His people. Or, a God
content to rule from a great distance. Or, a God whose majesty was too awesome
for us to behold. We have just the opposite. Jesus, the son of Mary and her
husband Joseph, experienced the very same humanity, the very same problems, and
the very same challenges that you do.
No, you do not walk this road alone. Jesus is the God
who came down from heaven. He was that man. “He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted
with grief. Surely, he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we
esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But he was pierced for
our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the
chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds, we are healed.” – Isaiah 53:3-5
Your heavenly Father is completely responsible for your
salvation from front to back! You don’t wake up one day and suddenly decide to
follow Jesus – Rather, He plants the seed of faith into your heart. He then nourishes
that faith by giving you His eternal Word, which is able to make us wise unto
salvation.
This is what St. Paul reminds us when he tells us “For it is by grace you have been saved, through
faith – and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God, not by works, so
that no one can boast.” Ephesians 2:8-9
Pay close attention to the clear words, and the gentle
voice of your Good Shepherd, Jesus, who says, “All that which the Father gives me shall come unto me; and he that
comes to me I will in no wise cast out.” – John 6:37
By faith, we knew of this reality that when God
pardons, He does not say He understands your weakness or make allowances for
your errors. Rather, He disposes of, finishes with, the whole of your dead life
and raises you up with a new one.
He does not so much deal with your failures as does He
drop them down the black hole of Jesus' death. He forgets your sins in the
darkness of the tomb. He remembers your iniquities no more in the forgetfulness
of Jesus' death.
He finds you in the desert of death, not in the garden
of improvement. And in the power of Jesus' resurrection, He puts you on His
shoulders, rejoicing, and brings you home![2]
Faith teaches us to understood grace. And Grace is
karma's worst nightmare; with grace, we get the exact opposite of what we
deserve. Grace is found in the God who loves us all; who loved us even unto
death, even death on a cross.
[1] Collect for New Year’s, The Lutheran Hymnal © 1941 Concordia Publishing House, St. Louis
[2] Robert Farrar Capon, Parables of Grace, pg. 39
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