Promises Kept

Now that Christmas is over, the Christian world (and all the rest, as well) can hurtle on down to the coming new year and all of the hope and promise that it brings.  Many of us are eager to start over again with at least a semi-clean slate, and we often try to do that with the coming of the new year.
In a way, it is indeed a new start.  Of course, we bring into the year much of the garbage and crud from the old, but we also look for the promise of better things…paying off a credit card, making a career change, graduating from college, starting a family, forgiving a friend.
I don’t mind if folks look at the new year as a way to begin again, especially if it’s the beginning of something good and right and decent.  Of course, we can never really start over, nor can we ever wipe the slate completely clean.  Like coming into the house with doggy do-do on your shoes, there’s always something unwanted or unneeded that sticks with us as we pass over the threshold of time into the new year.
Long ago, there were people who were looking forward to a better relationship with their Creator, assured that even though they didn’t see the fulfillment in their day, the better relationship would eventually come.  The writer of the book of Hebrews says of these folks, “All these died in faith, without receiving the promises, but having seen them and having welcomed them from a distance, and having confessed that they were strangers and exiles on the earth.”
We, too, welcome not only the promise of better things in 2006, but the continued realization of the promises made to those of long ago.  And that, dear friend, is the hope I have for you in this coming year…that you will experience the realization of the fulfillment of the promises made by God Himself in the coming year.