Newness in Christ

Daily Byte

Antoine de St. Exupery wrote a children’s book called The Little Prince – a whimsical tale about a little prince who travels from one fictional planet to another. While his adventure is grand, many of the planets he visits are quite small. So small, in fact, that he can watch the sun set, then quickly walk to the other side of the planet, and watch the sun set again! As long as he can walk more quickly than the little planets revolve, he can watch the sun rise and set as many times as he likes.

If the earth were not so big, I too might like to chase the sun around the earth, basking in hundreds of sunrises. I don’t think I would ever grow tired of this hobby, because there is something remarkably new about a sunrise.

Each time the sun sets, the sky becomes an empty canvas for the next morning’s artwork. The morning sky can be radically different from yesterday; it marks the beginning of a new day. The sky has never looked quite like this before, and the day is full of new possibilities. Every sunrise is a type of rebirth.

Just as the sky is always reinventing itself at sunrise, so too does Christ offer us a life of newness. We need not feel constrained by yesterday, for the possibility of today stands bright and fresh. Christ offers forgiveness for yesterday’s failures, sins, and disappointments. But more than that, Christ invites us to step wholly into a new way of living today.

There are many old things inside of us and we tend to hold on to old things because they are comfortable and known. Some of our old tendencies may be painful, such as the lingering heartache of a broken relationship. Or perhaps we suffer from a creeping complacency and boredom with the status quo. Or we may find that our hearts have grown stale, past sins keep us from God, or we struggle with jealousy and the inability to forgive. As we grow in Christ, we will let go of these old habits and become transformed into new creations.

Like the sunrise each morning, Christ offers us new life — so let us abandon what is old, and chase after the new!

Prayer

Almighty God,
Remove from us the cloak of old habits and sin which leads to death, and clothe us in new garments—garments of love, forgiveness, and generosity. Reveal to us our habits which lead to death, and transform us into creatures of life! We ask for new ideas, new friendships, new wisdom, and new places to serve. Thank you for your mercies, which are new every morning. And for your great love which is always changing us. Amen.

Scripture

2 Cor. 5:17-21

So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us. So we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us; we entreat –you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.