Fresh Grace For A New Year

Sermon for January 1, 2023 Fresh Grace for a New Year, Boundaries Series: Creation

Welcome to 2023. Who knew we’d make to 2023. Isn’t that the future? I remember when it turned 1975, and I was 12 and I felt like changing to 1975 was this huge catapult into the future. I was so excited! That’s ancient history. Time is a strange animal.

But we’re here and I’m glad we made it. Can you say: “Thank you God that we made it to 2023!”?

And as we begin this year I hope we can see 2023 as a year to freshly experience grace, to make the choice to live with more appreciation for the life that we’ve been given.

I think that this is really important: living with eyes open and with a heart of gratitude for who and what is in our life today.

Can you say amen? Amen for the good gifts of God, the good times and the times of fulness. Amen for the grace of God that is fresh today.

And amen to the fact that God was with us in some of our hardest yesterdays. Do you have some hard yesterdays?

For some of us 2022 was hard. Last year some of us lost people, family members or folks that we’ve known and journeyed with completed their journey on the planet, and that was hard.

So if you lost someone this past year, we understand that you are still hurting. We may not talk about it a lot, but we understand the pain and we have compassion for you who are still struggling deeply with those losses.

We are to mourn with those who mourn. That’s part of what it means to be the body of Christ.

When we reminisce about the past, we can get very sad about the folks that just aren't around anymore. And we often wish we could go back and tell them we love them.

Sometimes I think, If I could somehow go back there again I would just be more aware and more grateful for those who were in my life back then.

I would then live life more correctly and appreciatively, so then now, all these years later, I wouldn’t miss those people so terribly, as I do sometimes.

In my case I’m thinking of family members like Barb’s mother Shirley and friends that have been very important in my life like Rick Tobias. Of course you have those who you miss terribly.

But of course, we can’t go back. In our heads, yes, we can visit, but in reality we can’t go back.

So what’s the solution, if there is a solution? Time travel is out of the question.

The solution, or the way forward, is to live now with a heightened sense of gratitude and joy for those who are in our lives now, for the things of importance now.

It’s almost like to live as though I’m in the future, and many of these people are gone, but then to live now with the intensity and joy and appreciation that I would have wanted to have lived these moments. How’s that for mental time travel.

But that’s me rushing ahead of myself. Today I want to talk about 2 connected but distinct things. The first I’ve touched on already [moving into 2023 with fresh resolve to honour God and live at our best] and we’ll come back to in a few minutes. The second is that we are launching, for the New Year, a new preaching series on Boundaries.

Say what? Why would anybody want to do that?

We decided as a pastoral team that boundaries are a very important part of life, and that very often the problems that people face in life are related to boundaries - sometimes it’s not having boundaries, sometimes it’s not understanding that we can even set boundaries.

Sometimes it’s having a huge wall in place for a boundary when in fact for us to live better what we need is a small fence.

And today I want to just touch on the boundaries that God has set for His creation, including us, but I want to talk in a general sense. Next week we’ve get more into the nitty gritty.

So what are the boundaries that God has set for His Creation?

Genesis 1:1-2

1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 2 Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.

Well, our first Scripture verse today talks about the first boundary that God created. Of course “In the beginning God...” expresses this as well.

In the beginning was not matter, it was not this tiny speck that at the Big Bang exploded into what would become the known universe including this planet. In the beginning there were not many gods, and in the beginning there was not, notably, nothing.