People tend to obsess over the start of new things.
When I get a new book, I can definitely be described as “obsessed” with it. I get to turn pages with eager hands, view the words through thick reading glasses, and absorb and analyze ideas I’ve never been presented with before. It’s thrilling.
That’s how I feel about all the new possibilities for this year: it makes my heart rate increase out of anticipation. I feel ready for what God’s got up His sleeve. Because new things mean opportunities for the scope of your life to expand. Perhaps God will have you do something you could never have pictured yourself doing last year.
New students and the promise of another year infuse our campus with energy, making it more animated than a classic Disney movie. Energy and animation combine to produce a spring-like effect, with limitless opportunities popping up. Before the determination to stay on top of schoolwork dwindles to a state of distraction, before people and activities have the chance to blend and blur into a mosh of half-forgotten memories, before you forget what you read, decide what being new means to you and how to go about it.
“You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds.” Ephesians 4:22-23.
To be made new in the attitude of your mind, and to be transformed by the renewing of your mind, requires the active participation of more than just a temporarily steadfast will. It is typical for the “newness” of things to wear off once there is an established routine, but the biblical concept of “new” is not one that loses appeal once you get used to it. It transcends time, so that you can be new even after the passing of years.
Now is a time when things need to be persistently new. It’s a time to be completely consumed with what God wants to do, and a time to find the exclamation points on the page of this year.
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