Christmas is over. Now we can complete the holiday trifecta (Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s) by getting through this coming Sunday night and Monday and then we can put away all the decorations and get back to normal life.

          Unless you are Chinese. Chinese New Year starts on our date of February 16 this year. It will run for up to two weeks and is a time of celebration and gift giving. Much of the Asian world will celebrate the Chinese New Year this year, which means more people worldwide will have their New Year’s celebration then than will have it this weekend. Different cultures have always had it at their own time. Ours was set by the Catholic church, but it is really just like everyone else’s. Just an arbitrary day to start over.

          And boy, do we like to start over! So many make New Year’s resolutions. We are going to lose weight. We are going to read the Bible through. We are going to be nicer. We are going to be more Spiritual. We are going to do something special. I Resolve………….. In my personal experience, my resolutions fizzle out by my birthday, and my birthday is January 17.

          The last time Marsha and I willingly stayed up till midnight on New Year’s Eve was the night 1999 turned over to 2000. Not so much to see the century turn. The century didn’t actually turn until 2000 turned to 2001. Look it up. But what we were interested in mostly was that for three years Marsha had been working with a company that was making computer systems Y2K compliant. A system that had gone on-line before 1985 would not be able to handle the date change. So, Marsha had been working to get into the system and change each individual program to make sure it worked in the new dating system. (Marsha may come off as a little scattered brained, because she can be a little scattered brained, but extremely bright people are sometimes a little scattered brained. Marsha is one of those people who kept the world functioning at the change-over. You can thank her later.) We stayed up just to see if the world kept going. The last time I stayed up willingly was the last year our last church had something going on. Marsha’s attitude was she wasn’t going. She had saved the world once, no need to stay up again. The cool thing about that night was that someone brought their Wii game system. We hooked it up to the projector system in the sanctuary and we had a little bowling tournament. We projected the image on the wall, so the characters that were bowling were bigger than the people controlling them. And really good snacks, too.

          I think as we get older, though, the excitement goes away. At one time I would not have missed staying up till midnight. But now it is…….why? Why stay up late, why make resolutions, why make a deal out of it all?

          I am not saying we shouldn’t seek to improve ourselves. Far from it, actually. But it doesn’t take an arbitrary day. Look back at the days that changed your lives.         

          The day you fell in love. Was it New Year’s? The day you became a parent? Is there any day of real importance in your life that falls on New Year’s? For most of us, it is just another day.

The best New Year’s Day ever, for me, was 1969. The University of Southern California (USC) Trojans, which featured Heisman winner O.J. Simpson, were the number one ranked college football team in the nation and the Ohio State University (OSU) Buckeyes were the number 2 team. Back in those days there was no college playoff system to determine the national championship. Four big bowl games that invited the best teams that they could get and then the national championship was voted on by sports writers and coaches. But that year, the number one team and the number two team were scheduled to meet in the Rose Bowl. This hardly ever happened. OSU took the national championship by beating the USC Trojans 27 to 16. Still makes me smile.

So, if the day isn’t really special by itself, why make a big deal about it?

It is special in that it begins a new year. What you do with 2018 will define who you are. We here at the church are faced with decisions about the future of God’s church. These are not decisions we need to make to satisfy ourselves and our wants, but they need to be in accordance with what the Lord has planned for us. What makes us happy may, or may not, be what makes Him happy. This is the year to put the future in motion for this congregation. I think we all understand that the time is upon us. Whichever way we go, indecision is just going to drag us down.

So, Sunday night is New Year’s. Most of us will not see midnight come and go. But we will live 2018. I pray we live it for the glory of God.

Blessings.