Dawn of Reasoning

Dawn of the new year moves slowing around the globe. Strange, if I’m speaking on the phone to someone on the other side of the date line, we could be in different years. There is no single time of demarcation where the old is tossed and the new is in, it is a gradual dawning where small Pacific Islands awaken before the rest of the world.

What do we expect from this change of dates? The first thing I expect is that I shall forget to change the year on documents for at least a couple of weeks.

I shall wonder what happened to all of 2009, looking back at calendars and photographs to be certain I didn’t sleep the year away. This one time even the teenagers see that time moves quickly away, though the future seems endless.

I shall not miss the passage of time in heaven. No rising of the sun to mark the beginning of day, nor waxing and waning of the moon to mark the seasons.

And the city had no need of the sun, neither of the moon, to shine in it: for the glory of God did lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof. (Revelation 21:23 KJV)

Only the cleansed shall inhabit.

And there shall in no wise enter into it any thing that defileth, neither whatsoever worketh abomination, or maketh a lie: but they which are written in the Lamb's book of life. (Revelation 21:27 KJV)

Baptism is a physical display of what we expect – a resurrection from the old to the new.

Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. (Romans 6:4 KJV)

Just as the resolutions so many make for the coming year, we fail to accomplish in this imperfect world the totality of our promise. Christ knew this.

Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation: the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak. (Matthew 26:41 KJV)

As Isaiah wrote to Israel, so God speaks to us:

Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes; cease to do evil; Learn to do well; seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow. Come now, and let us reason together, saith the LORD: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool. (Isaiah 1:16-18 KJV)

Can you imagine reasoning with God? It requires speaking to Him, and expecting an answer. He has laid His side out in the Bible, what say you in return?

Surely your turning of things upside down shall be esteemed as the potter's clay: for shall the work say of him that made it, He made me not? or shall the thing framed say of him that framed it, He had no understanding? (Isaiah 29:16 KJV)

If you do not now do so, begin this new year reasoning with the Lord.