Pastor's Weekly Word

Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me. (Psalm 51:10)

There is something about the turn of the year that makes it all seem new and fresh. It’s as if, in this one brief moment, we feel like we actually have the chance to put our past behind us and look with fresh eyes into a bright future filled with possibility. “Let’s bury the past, and get on with it,” we think. It can feel wonderfully optimistic. Verse 10 in Psalm 51 is just the kind of line we need for such a time. Help me start over, Lord. The ball has dropped, and the year has changed. Create a clean heart in me, and help me start over.

What is it that makes us feel this way? It might have something to do with the notion that, most of the time, we feel like robots. We have our routines and our schedules, and the days seem to roll into each other with an abundance of ordinary. We feel like, as CS Lewis puts it, “little tin soldiers.” And we don’t always know what to do with feeling like that, feeling like a tin soldier simply going through the motions. But God does. God’s response was to become one of us, a little tin soldier just like us. And so it is with Jesus Christ, the one who was born into this world like we are, the one who lived this life like we do, the one who died and was raised to new life. As Lewis is quick to point out, “The humanity of Christ rose again, not only the God. That is the whole point. For the first time we saw a real person. One tin soldier - real tin, just like the rest - had come fully and splendidly alive.”

I think we do feel like tin soldiers sometimes, and the New Year seems to remind us of what might be possible. So let’s embrace it. Move into this year convinced of the transformation God has perfected in us by melting our hearts made of tin with the love Jesus Christ our Lord, the one who makes us fully and completely alive, the one who makes us feel like new. Happy New Year!