New Year: New You or New Us?

I hope that your Christmas was enjoyable as our family's was. We enjoyed seeing so many of you for our CCR Christmas Eve Candlelight and Christmas Day Service. I trust that this Season has been one to find new traditions for our CCR family.

As the Christmas Season concludes we look to the New Year. For some it is the most exciting time of the year. Parties and fireworks will abound. In the next few days, the newspapers will begin a debate on New Year's Resolutions. Some will take the position that Resolutions are just a formality and nothing ever really changes. What has been is what will be. We all will continue to fall back into our old patterns no matter how good are intentions. Others will have a more optimistic view of humanity's ability to change and argue that Resolutions do matter.

For Christmas I was given a January 2008 edition of "Runners World" magazine. Its headline was "NEW YEAR NEW YOU." It took the position that change is possible and outlined ways that it could happen. I suspect that our presupposition about our belief or disbelief in personal change actually reflects how we sit on the continuum between fate and responsibility. Do we believe that we can make a difference or is life predetermined by fate?

Though I strongly lean towards the concept of personal change, I could not help but notice that somehow our community was left out of the process. Would it not be better to seek a NEW US IN THE NEW YEAR? Far too much time and energy is spent worrying about one's self and too little about one's neighbors, family, and friends. Jesus even told a parable about the detrimental effects of self absorption called the parable of the Good Samaritan.

This Sunday I'll raise the question of what will it take to bring about a New Us in the New Year. I won't pretend to have all the answers, but hopefully together we can find some good answers.

One of my prayers for our generation in Rwanda is that we will see a Second Revival began as heirs to the East African Revival that begin in Rwanda in the 1930's. A man that we will look at this week as we ponder the question of a New Us is Jonathon Edwards. He was a leader in the American frontier's First Great Awakening in the 1740's. He developed a list of 70 Resolutions that he used to examine himself each week. Historians have pointed out four of his Resolutions that seem particularly pertinent. They are:

Resolved, never to lose one moment of time, but improve it the most profitable way I possibly can.

Resolved, never to do any thing, which I should be afraid to do, if it were the last hour of my life.

Resolved, to ask myself at the end of every day, week, month and year, wherein I could possibly in any respect have done better.

Resolved, never hence-forward, till I die, to act as if I were any way my own, but entirely and altogether God's.

Resolved, never to give over, nor in the least to slacken my fight with my corruptions, however unsuccessful I may be.

I hope to see you this week as we ask the question of what it will take to make a New Us in the New Year.

Imana ikurinde,

Dave

P.S. Besides joining us Sunday at 10:00 a.m. also you are welcome to join us for our CCR New Year's Day Thanksgiving Service at 10:00 a.m.