Happy New Year!
Yes, you read that right. And no, this didn’t accidentally run 5 weeks early. For over 20 years serving as a parish pastor, my life was ruled by the church calendar. And as you surely know, the church calendar is a little different than the regular calendar. Since the church year walks through the life of Jesus, it starts by preparing for his coming, in the first season of the church year, the season we call Advent. This year, the first Sunday of Advent – the first day of the new church year – is November 28. So I say again, Happy New Year!
That will sound unusual to most people in our world. The church calendar is different from the calendar most people are used to. But if you think about it, that’s not unusual, is it? The church is always different than the world around us. That can become a challenge, or a source of frustration, but going back to Old Testament times, God’s people have always been different. This wasn’t our own doing – it’s not like we’re better – but Jesus has made us different. He has convicted us of our sins, emptied us of our trust in ourselves, and filled us with himself. He has made us his own, and in doing that, he made us different. We have different goals, different interests, different priorities, different purposes. We’re not all about ourselves. We’re not all about this life. We have all our needs met by Jesus. We have our eternal future guaranteed by Jesus. So we can live focused on others, and focused on eternity.
And that’s different, and people around us might not get it. But that’s ok, because to the world, we’ve always looked different. So go ahead, be who Jesus made you. Be different!