DAILY DEVOTIONAL – January 1, 2021
“Everlasting to Everlasting”
Prayer: Everlasting Father, Your faithfulness to us extends from before You formed the earth and into the eternity You have promised and prepared for us. In Your mercy, Lord, grant that we may live in and by the power of Your Word, Jesus Christ, through whom You have already raised us from the dead and by whom You will make all things new. Amen.
Scripture: Psalm 93
The Lord reigns; he is robed in majesty;
the Lord is robed; he has put on strength as his belt.
Yes, the world is established; it shall never be moved.
2 Your throne is established from of old;
you are from everlasting.
3 The floods have lifted up, O Lord,
the floods have lifted up their voice;
the floods lift up their roaring.
4 Mightier than the thunders of many waters,
mightier than the waves of the sea,
the Lord on high is mighty!
5 Your decrees are very trustworthy;
holiness befits your house,
O Lord, forevermore.
Devotion – “Everlasting to Everlasting”
Happy new year everyone! I pray that this year is filled with all of the hope, joy, and love of God that has been given to you in the Christ Child who has redeemed us and made us children of God through His own life, death, and resurrection.
Most new years people are focused on what they can do different, what changes they can bring about in their lives to make living life better and more enjoyable. Most new years, people are focused on new things. However, I am willing to bet I am not alone in being a bit less enthusiastic about anything more new or “novel”, and that I’m not the only one feeling like I have had enough change for at least two years. Despite all of the uncertainty 2020 has brought, God has no doubt used it to bring His blessings. There is a lot to be gained, I believe, by focusing more on what has been before instead of what lies ahead. The sentiment most new years is “out with the old and in with the new.” I think there is much to be gained in our faith and spiritual life this year by allowing our sentiment to instead be “out with the new and in with the old.”
Although it is often held that newer is better, the truth is, the most valuable things are the things that endure. When it comes to a price tag, very often the products and items that are worth the most are the things that are old, aged, tested, and true. They are not worth more just because they are old, but because their age has increased the significance of their value, because they have a meaning that goes deeper than aesthetics. For example, hand-made antiques where every facet of it was meticulously labored over by human hands. It has someone’s heart and soul in it and it embodies in a very tangible way a unique time and place in human history. Or how about authentic vinyl records, memorabilia of certain events or time periods, archeological artifacts, wines and spirits, and some of the finest and most expensive musical instruments in the world all possess immense value not only because they are old, but also because the new things and new ways and new techniques are not always as perfected as those of the past.
As we have learned this past year especially, the waves of change brought about by life’s storms can be lifted up far above our heads, threatening to overwhelm and drown us. In Psalm 93, the psalmist cries out to God in faith and finds comfort and hope in the God who reigns from eternity, whose “throne is established from of old”, the Ancient of Days as the prophet Daniel declares God to be (Daniel 7:9). When the tides of change swell up and threaten to wipe away everything we know and are familiar with, there is only one place we can go to anchor our souls and stem the tide – the ancient and trustworthy Words of God upon which the “world is established”, as the psalmist says, the decrees of God that “are very trustworthy.”
God Himself calls us to consider the waves themselves and understand who is ultimately in control. Job was a man who was faithful, but who also suffered immensely and who I am sure felt as the psalmist said, “The floods have lifted up, O Lord, the floods have lifted up their voice; the floods lift up their roaring!” Job lamented to God in his suffering, and when God finally answered He asked Job in chapter 38:
Who shut in the sea with doors
when it burst out from the womb,
when I made clouds its garment
and thick darkness its swaddling band,
and prescribed limits for it
and set bars and doors,
and said, ‘Thus far shall you come, and no farther,
and here shall your proud waves be stayed’?
God’s rhetorical questions to Job were intended to make Job put all of His hope of a better tomorrow in the Words of God; His Words that create, His Words that promise salvation, and His eternal Word that became flesh, in Jesus, who fulfilled all of God’s promises and who drowned in the waves and depths of our sins, who descended into the depths of the grave, in order that He would destroy death and pull us up with Himself from the depths to new and everlasting life through the waters of baptism where the Word of God worked faith and salvation for us.
God’s Word certainly calls us to desire to live the best life we can, and look to live in the newness of life we have been given as new creations in Christ. However, Jesus also made clear that apart from the Ancient of Days, apart from His Words given through the prophets, disciples, and Apostles of old, apart from an ever-deepening relationship with Him in His Word that has proven trustworthy, we are absolutely incapable of living in the newness of live given to us by that very Word of God.
Ecclesiastes 1:9 reminds us that, “What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun.” The only one that can bring the change we do desire in our lives is the One who is above the sun, the One who gave us our lives, that One who has revealed Himself and His power to us in His Word. Cling to Him and to His Words, and look forward to whatever 2021 may bring knowing that “the steadfast love of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear him,” and that God has forgiven yesterday, is with you today, and has already taken care of 2021. Amen.
