"All is calm." Those words passed my vocal chords again as I was singing what I later counted as my thirty-first verse of Silent Night that day. After a full day of worship, services, technological experiments, I felt God's presence in that moment. "All is calm." finally.

 

It was Christmas Day, nearing 1 a.m., and I made the silent walk from the locked church building across the street to the Mud Creek Barn where I had parked. I love that walk.I've come to look forward to it every year. it is silent. The air is crisp. "All is calm."

 

It is funny how that moment escapes so quickly. Just a few hours later, I'm up and in a sweat loading our compact car full of luggage and family Christmas gifts. It went from "All is calm", to "all is chaos." If you've ever loaded a small car with a baby's things, you know this chaos. There's a bag for each of the necessities.like diapers, wipes, dress clothes, play clothes, nap clothes, eating clothes, bedtime clothes, etc. There are favorite toys, blankets, and that contingency bag in case the unexpected happens. There are strollers, portable cribs, and those certain plastic spoons that no one else seems to have and yet the only thing from which the child will eat. Then, there's your wife's stuff. Finally jam packed in a little car, we traversed five states while sleeping in four or five different beds, unpacking and repacking that same stuff time and time again along with the new things that Grandma felt that the baby just had to have. Then, New Year's Eve.the night when we do the same old things in hopes of whole new things coming in the new year.

 

The biblical writer of Ecclesiastes says, "when the clouds are full of water, it rains." (Ecc 11:3). New Year's Eve is like that. When the calendar is full of days, 365 days of experiences, it can no longer contain it all and lets it all go. I like that.it would seem very heavy to carry the days of memories gone by with no mental opportunity to start over.to say, this year will be different. It's an opportunity to close the chapter of another year.a year with no more mysteries.it is history. The culture, the calendar, and even the church urge us on to encounter new mysteries.new possibilities. I like that too. I like believing that a clean slate, an empty calendar (not yet full of meetings and events) is ripe and ready for new challenges for growth in a number of ways. After the roar of midnight wore off and I switched off the television having watched the ball drop in Times Square, all was calm once again.

 

I guess it wasn't calm for everyone.stories the next morning of DUIs, shootings, video of Saddam meeting his death and the like reminded me that just because all was calm in my personal bubble, all (in the largest sense of the word) was not calm. Checking email later, I came to the conclusion that some friends, family, and church members must have resolved to confess stories and sins to me so that the new year could be welcomed without the burdens of guilt and inner turmoil. That was fine by me and I was glad to be one trusted to bear those with others.

 

It is a new year and for us as a church community, this is our first gathering of the new year. Twenty-one years of history as a church now ready to embrace a new year that will certainly see things we can't fully anticipate yet. As the great evangelist Henry Ward Beecher would say, "Now comes the mystery." The days ahead of us are precious, unknown to us, mysterious to us. In some sense we have to lay aside our "What ifs" and "What could have beens" from 2006 in order to give our best to the life in front of us.

 

We enter a new year with expectations.retirement for some, graduation for others, marriage for some, divorce for others, babies, vacations, same-old-same-old for some. We worry about those things too. I worry far more about my life than I should-my mobility, my future, my health, my retirement, Morgan's well-being (and college education). A new mother was growing frantic one day saying, how can I send my baby away to college? Another "more seasoned" mother said that you start by changing her diapers, helping her walk, sending her to kindergarten, to junior high, to prom, to graduation. When the time comes you'll be ready. We are a culture of immediacy. We want it now.we expect it now.and yet sometimes we are afraid of this pace of life. I love the beginning of Paul's words in our text today as he says, "Christ urges us on." It is indeed a strong encouragement to move forward. It's not lackadaisical in any way. But it doesn't say, "Christ shoves us on." It allows us time to dip our lives into the mystery of tomorrow without such a state of worry.

 

We are urged into this new year.to set aside some fear and worry and to embrace the mystery before us. And while we have some of the same hesitations and expectations every year (like America's number one resolution to get physically fit), we approach this year in a way like no other. This new year is not the same as any year before. A Greek philosopher said it this way, "No man can step in the same river twice for he is not the same man, and it is not the same river." We are not the same as we were last year. We have lost loved ones, we have lost jobs, we have fractured relationships, just as we have gained new loved ones, relationships, jobs, and the like. We have changed.and the rivers of our lives have changed.the world has changed. We are new. The world is new. The year is new.

 

Different things excite us now. We are at a different point in time. This was never more evident to me than when we were shopping at the mall after Christmas. We wandered into a children's clothing store. I wandered I guess, Carrie was quite intentional about going there. It was only moments before my wife grew extremely excited when she found pajamas (you know the ones fully equipped with booties) on sale for three dollars. You would have thought she won the lottery or something. A year ago, this scene would never have happened. We meet this new year with new things that excite us. We recognize that we are once again new creations.

 

In some shape or form, you greet this new year differently.you are a new creation of some sort, you are excited about different things. Even when it comes to the church, we are excited about different things this year. Some are excited that we'll break ground on a new facility at our north campus this year. Some are excited about becoming an elder or growing more in their walk of faith than ever before by getting involved in a Bible Study or support group. Some are just excited to be here today.you've resolved to be more faithful to God.to your church, and you've committed to being in worship every week. So far so good. It was tough I know.God is testing you already. Having the Colts playoff game coincide with the first worship experience of the year.very crafty. You have passed the test.some are sitting on the couch at home right now. I'll be honest, if I wasn't preaching tonight.the couch demons may have gotten me too.

 

No matter how you are approaching this year, I imagine that you have thought about it at least a little bit.what this year might be like. Some of us are ambitious. We have lofty goals that could realistically take a lifetime that we expect to achieve this month. I'll admit to being like that much of the time. While that immediate mindset is often faulty, sometimes our circumstances call for drastic change. Looking at the top ten list of American resolutions, some are resolving to quit smoking or to get sober and those, among other things, call for some immediate change. Other things happen to us, change us, and we cannot help it. A spouse dies and we are immediately changed and have to adjust our immediate lifestyle. We get downsized at work and have to scramble to find a new way to support our family.

 

You may have heard of Chris Gardner. His life is the focus of the movie The Pursuit of Happyness which is still out in theatres. It is the story of his life.his rise from poverty to prominence. He is played by Will Smith and the story of his perseverance is inspiring. Adam Hamilton, a pastor of a large church in Leawood, Kansas, called his brokerage firm in Chicago recently to see if he could find out a little more about him and was amazed when the receptionist put him through to Gardner. Hamilton was preparing for Christmas Eve services and thought he'd see if Gardner had any stories of Christmas or if he was even a person of faith at all.

 

Gardner began with a Christmas memory. He was sixteen years old and living at home with his mother, brothers and sisters, and an alcoholic, abusive stepfather. It was Christmas Day and the rest of the family went across town to be with some other family for the day but Gardner stayed home to the dismay of his stepfather. Finally, a quiet home."all was calm" in his world, if but for a moment. He decided to soak in a hot bath and relax and as he was, he heard the door bust open and quick, bouncing steps coming toward the bathroom. The bathroom door slammed against the wall and the shower curtain ripped off. There stood his stepfather, drunk with a shotgun in his hand. He put the gun to the back of Gardner's head and shouted, "I want you out of here." Gardner said, "I'm all wet. Can I get some clothes?" "Out," he replied. "Can I at least get a towel?" "I want you out now," he snapped back peering down the barrel of his gun. Gardner was pushed down the hall and out the front door into the fifteen degree winter weather. There he stood, soaking wet, buck naked, in the cold and forced to find a new home on Christmas Day. That's immediate change in your world.

Hamilton asked him, "How did you deal with that?" Gardner said, "by God's love alone could I go on."¹ Paul knows this love and he tells us again, "the love of Christ urges us on." We have something to live for because we believe Jesus died once for all of us and we no longer live for ourselves..we live for him. (verse 15)

 

In Christ we are new creations. Sometimes, like in Gardner's case, we are forced into a radical new creation by our circumstance. Some difficult experiences may be ahead of each of us this year. As much as we want to know what that might be, we can't know that. For most of us, however, we live under less extreme conditions. We have more time to make choices and decisions that can alter our existence and that of others we are called to help in this world. We are called to bear fruit, to make a difference in the world. Our purpose for living is not to simply maintain life but to be an agent of mission. Your mission, in some shape or form, is to make a difference using the gifts God has entrusted to you.

 

How will you be a difference maker this year? Making a difference is a day to day decision which requires day to day action. We can't operate with a "same-old-same-old" mindset and expect things to change. We need to make conscious decisions in order to make definite change. We easily get caught up in the radical nature of change.thinking that we need to be "shoved into change", that the only diet that will work for us is one in which we are starved of any food. Christ urges us on.making a daily change can ultimately make the radical changes we hoped for.

 

Jonathan McKee is a pastor, author, and nationally recognized speaker. With the new year approaching, he decided that time was passing much too quickly. On a flight to Denver, he began to think about how much time he had left with his family.not in the sense that his insurance company told him, assuming their statistics were right, he'd make it to age 79. He was thinking more of the time his kids would have in their home before moving out to go to college or whatever was next. "Phase two" of life as he called it. Some of you have experienced this or will soon. His oldest son is in the middle of his 8th grade year and will soon be in high school. He was reflecting on the fact that he has less than five years left with all of the kids in the house. That's barely 1700 days. "You usually don't think of these things until you've already blown it," he said. "I had blown it."

 

That's why he was in tears on the way to Denver. He had not been giving his family 100%. He was doing great things in ministry and he had worked to guard their family time, setting up parameters to protect this time, blocking out Tuesday nights as family nights. He meant well but had been falling short of this goal. The night before that particular flight, his daughter asked if they could just hang out as a family that night. "I love family nights," McKee said, "but honestly, on this particular night my first thought was, 'It's not Tuesday-it's not family night!' I looked her in the eyes and told her, 'I'm tired Ashley. I think I want to just sit here.' So I sent her upstairs to play with her sister."

 

The plane leaving the ground, peering out of the small plane window he could still see the look of disappointment on her face. It was painful for him. He had been burning the candle at both ends, traveling, writing, serving, leading, administrating, etc, etc. Not unlike the busy-ness we find ourselves in. The irony in McKee's case is that he was on his way to Denver to teach at a huge "parenting" conference. And so tears found his face as he contemplated the way he was spending his time in this life that was shorter by the day.

 

"I knew it was time for a change," he said. "Nothing drastic... nothing that many people would really even notice. But I would notice. My kids would notice. I knew I needed to pay more attention to "the important" and stop being enslaved to "the urgent."

 

Upon arriving home, he made some key changes to his calendar.blocking out mornings for one-on-one breakfasts with each of his kids.and adding another evening to spend with just the family. He told a publisher of a potential book that he would not even consider taking on another project until he finished his current project to be done in March. Finally, he went to the bank and bought a little over 1700 nickels; one nickel for every day he has left before his oldest goes off to school. He put them all in a huge glass jar. Each day he takes out a nickel and shoves it in his pocket. The nickel is a reminder of the five places he needs to give non-negotiable attention that day: God, his wife Lori, and his three kids. Everything else (even the good things) all follow those five. Each day when he completes his time with God and his family, he gives the nickel away.

 

This isn't a simple decision. It's a daily commitment. The jar of nickels is dwindling every day and some days are harder to stay committed than others. But he's living each day, struggling to put the tyranny of the urgent aside with his focus on loving God and loving others.

 

The new year comes and we so often put out these huge resolutions that never come to fruition. I'm a big dreamer, myself.I dream big and feel like I can only attain big things if I dream big things. Even so, it's the manner in which I approach these things where I often fall short. My mind of immediacy thinks it can all happen at once.I can lose thirty pounds at once, my kids can fall in love with me in a moment, I can end the war today. The noise of this urgency drowns out the calm and my ability to achieve. It's a daily change.an attitude of intentionality that will make 2007 everything that it can be. It's 351 days until I'll sing "All is calm" again and I have some tendency to want to jump immediately to that night.but in doing so, I would miss the journey that is 2007.the possibility, the hope, the challenge, the change. I would miss the laughs with friends, the birth of new babies, the growth of my daughter, the growing beauty of my wife, the growth of relationships, and even the heartaches, the losses, the pain that makes us stronger. It is in that journey that I become a new creation in Christ.it is a process. I could long for that "all is calm" moment next Christmas Eve but instead, I'll engage fully in life now. It is only one day until tomorrow.some times, that's all I need to know.