Nena Arias | December 30, 2019
Without a doubt you have heard the expression at the start of a new calendar year, “Ring out the old, Ring in the new”. That is always a refreshing thought to think that the new year brings new opportunities to remake ourselves in many ways, and why not? But if you think about it in principle, we don’t have to wait for the beginning of a new year to have those opportunities because every day that we wake up to a new day, those opportunities are there for us.
What will the year 2020 bring to us? If you are optimistic you are hoping that all your hard work will finally pay off in some significant way. A new year also brings some dread to us for fear of the unknown, especially when we look around us and listen to the newscasters of how much chaos is in the world and we become aware of the threats that are coming against us and the conflicts among the nations that threaten the entire world because we are all so connected.
Human life works exactly like the laws of sowing and reaping. Farmers and people who understand these laws depend on how well they understand the health of the soil they are planting in, the quality of the seeds they are using and how to care for them, they also understand the times and the seasons, the climates, and how sudden changes in weather patterns will effect them. There is a world of information plus experience that those who work the land must have to make a go of it. The laws of sowing and reaping are the same the world over depending on the peculiarities of the different regions.
The same is true of life and God’s Word puts it this way: “Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap. For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life.” (Galatians 6:7-8)
My concern for our nation is that we have been sowing the wrong seeds and have turned our culture upside down due to a culture of lies. We have betrayed the only real source of truth known to man, which is God’s truth. We have broken every important moral wall. We have moral rot eating us alive by the redefinition of so many of the pillars that hold a society together.
The America of today is unrecognizable with the America of just a few decades ago. What we knew to be darkness we now call light.
Malcolm Muggeridge, (1903-1990) an English journalist and satirist said:
“People do not believe lies because they have to, but because they want to.”
It is undeniable that our culture has become a culture of lies rather than the truth because people have chosen to believe lies so they can justify their licentious lifestyles. People live in terms of what they want to believe.
In assessing our civilization, Muggeridge gave the following conclusion:
“So the final conclusion would surely be that whereas other civilizations have been brought down by attacks of barbarians from without, ours had the unique distinction of training its own destroyers at its own educational institutions, and then providing them with facilities for propagating their destructive ideology far and wide, all at the public expense. Thus did Western Man decide to abolish himself, creating his own boredom out of his own affluence, his own vulnerability out of his own strength, his own impotence out of his own erotomania, himself blowing the trumpet that brought the walls of his own city tumbling down, and having convinced himself that he was too numerous, labored with pill and scalpel and syringe to make himself fewer. Until at last, having educated himself into imbecility, and polluted and drugged himself into stupefaction, he keeled over–a weary, battered old brontosaurus–and became extinct.”
It is unbelievable that atrocities, immorality and lies can find so many, even so-called high intellectuals, and even church denominations, to justify them. We cannot effectively engage a culture that has forgotten or ignored the source of truth, which only comes from God. We are reaping the atrocities and witnessing barbaric behaviors such as a dad shooting a barber over his 13-year-old son’s haircut, a woman punching a person in the face for saying “Merry Christmas” to her. A gunman opens fire in a church during communion hurting and killing people. Even our nation’s political leaders, who are supposed to be leading the way to a better life, are such liars and corrupt individuals. They say one thing, then when they are pressured, they quickly switch and do a 180 degree turn in order to save face and their position. They flip-flop on all the important issues and they accuse others of misinterpreting them in their efforts to do damage control and they can continue in their path of falsehoods and personal interests.
If I have one prayer and desire for us in the new year it would be to “ring out the lies and ring in the truth”. Let’s start planting the right seeds in our lives and culture to reap the law and order we long for. Let it begin with me and you now.
Why should the turning of a calendar page make any difference? Does the beginning of a new year have something different than any other day or time in a person’s life? If not, why put off or use a new year as an excuse to NOT get started today on what you want to improve in your life and the lives of those around you? Don’t wait for others to start. Let’s accept our personal responsibility and set an example. The sooner we get started, the sooner we will see better results. We will reap what we sow.