Our door of opportunity in 2025
In 2025, we will be using new dates on our correspon dence, using new calendars to put in our activities, and celebrating another trip around the sun. Celebrations of a New Year have been around since ancient times. From the giving of the Law at Mt. Sinai, the Lord established a time to celebrate a new year. It provided for a reset of everyone’s lives. In fact, every fifty years, there was to be a great reset, where land reverted to the original owners and those enslaved due to debt were to be set free. This was known as the year of Jubilee.
When I think of New Year celebrations, the poem of Louise Fletcher Tarkington I read years ago comes to mind, “I wish that there were some wonderful place called The Land of Beginning Again, where all our mistakes and all of our heartaches and all of our poor, selfish grief could be dropped like a shabby coat at the door, and never put on again.” Maybe this is why we see the old year depicted as an old man and the new year shown as a baby.
We would be deceiving ourselves if we thought the New Year would be completely different from last year in terms of struggles, problems, and challenges that are ongoing and still need resolution. A New Year does not magically erase our situations and our challenges, but it does give us an opportunity to see a door of opportunity for new paths, new directions, new attitudes, and new (or renewed) commitments.
The Apostle Paul was constantly facing difficulties, and often spent time in prisons, perhaps even on New Year’s Day. However, regardless of his circumstances, he looked for opportunities. While in the city of Ephesus, the Apostle Paul wrote, “But I will tarry in Ephesus until Pentecost. For a great and effectual door is opened to me, and there are many adversaries.” As we celebrate the arrival of 2025, let us do so with expectancy and anticipation, not that things will necessarily be different, but that we will be different in seeing and seizing the opportunities it will present to us. May we find doors of opportunity in terms of service to others and our Lord. May we use the reset to change our attitudes and actions that otherwise are destructive to us and others. In the Latin words I learned in High School, “Carpe Diem”-seize the day, and make the most of our New Year.
