The most momentous junction

New Year’s resolution…blah, blah, blah,…lose weight, quit smoking, get healthy, …blah, blah, blah…off the diet, still lighting up, quit the gym…blah, blah, blah. Wait eleven and a half months. Repeat.

It’s that time of year again. We’re at that momentous junction when one time period ends and another begins and it feels like a fresh start and we think, yes!…this is the year I’m going to make things happen…do things differently…and conquer every little thing that stands in my way. And then…thing one and thing two, thing three, four, five…trip us up, crush our enthusiasm, and foil our plans. Ah, well…there’s always next year.

This junction through which we traverse between years is not the most momentous junction we will cross over. We return to it every 365 days, but there’s a junction in time we traverse only once. And just as people on the other side of the globe enter the new year at a different time than we do, we find ourselves at this once-in-a-lifetime junction at different times as well. For some, they have many New Year’s Eve celebrations to experience. For others…tonight will be their last.

We all know we’re going to die, and most people profess a belief in a life after this one. The death of our bodies is that junction between temporal being and eternal. And though we assent to the singularly significant reality of that upcoming junction in time, how many of us make any kind of resolution regarding that reality?

I fear for people, especially some close to me, who are so focused on this life that they put off decisions about what they believe the next life will entail. They know, as we all do, that this earthly existence will come to an end, but they figure they’ve got time to make a determination about what they believe to be true about God. And maybe they do. But maybe they don’t. Do any of us know the day and time of our death?

If there are any New Year’s resolutions we all should be making, they are to lose the weight of consumer-driven anxiety and debt, quit focusing on the physical to the neglect of the spiritual, and ensure that we have a real and increasingly vibrant relationship with our Creator. If you’re not sure he even exists, is it not prudent to take the time that you have to look at the evidence? If you believe he doesn’t, are you certain enough to stake your eternal destiny on your conclusion of atheism?

If you claim to believe in God but you pay him no mind…do you really think he’s okay with that?

 

This is what the calendar looks like in my mind. I don’t know why I go right to left…I’ve always been a bit odd, I guess. I like to think now that maybe God was giving me a vision of sorts of my eventual inclusion in his chosen people – those who have faith in Jesus Christ. You know, like the Israelites were chosen by God and Hebrew is read right to left.

And just as this time measurement is reversed…different…so too the time period we will each enter upon our death will be unlike what we have ever known. But though it will be like suddenly finding ourselves in a foreign country, we’ll know what to do and where to go if we have a Guide.

This New Year, let’s not be more concerned with what we look like or even how healthy we are, than what condition our soul is in. Because no matter how tenderly and consistently we care for our physical body, it’s still going to deteriorate and die. But our spiritual body…that lives on. And how we attend to it in this life determines where it will spend eternity in the next.