Beginnings 3

 

NEW BEGINNINGS

Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity.  

What profit hath a man of all his labour which he taketh under the sun? 

One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh

That cry of despair from the writer of the biblical book of Ecclesiastes always reminds me of the “Carry On” film where, I think it is it Julius Caesar who cries out “Infamy! Infamy! They’ve all got it in for me!”

Caesar may have been right, but isn’t the writer of Ecclesiastes just over-indulging a bit ? He’s asking “What’s the point of everything ? “What’s the point of anything ?”

Now before you switch off, please listen to this: go a little bit further (to verse 9, to be precise) and we read:

What has been will be again,
    what has been done will be done again;
    there is nothing new under the sun.

There might well be nothing new under the sun, but that’s no reason to despair.  Why not ? Because Almighty God, in His wisdom, has created everything – YES! I believe that is true. So, of course, there is nothing that is actually “new”. As time goes by we discover things that are new to us – a baby learns to walk, a 7-year old discovers he can be cheeky and get away with it, a 13 year old uses her eyelashes to beguile the beau of her choosing. Education may be about learning things that have been for ever but it is also about discovering those things for ourselves, interpreting and adapting them to our own, current situation.

There’s been a lot of “Happy New Year” going around recently. Is that a genuine wish, or a hope, or even another cry of despair ? It’s both a frustration and an exciting challenge that none of us knows what lies ahead in 2023. Obviously Charlton Athletic aren't going to win the FA CUP – Or are they ? We don’t know.

And that is what can make a New Year, or for that matter, any new beginning, fascinating. A new birth, a new school, a new job, a marriage, a new home, retirement. Nothing is new and yet all is new. As the hymn writer puts is:

 New every morning is the love
our wakening and uprising prove;
through sleep and darkness safely brought,
restored to life and power and thought. 2) New mercies, each returning day,
hover around us while we pray;
new perils past, new sins forgiven,
new thoughts of God, new hopes of heaven.

The coming of Jesus changed the word from “new” to ‘news’. The Good News is, of course, that God sent His only Son into a world that, because of the selfishness of mankind, had become evil. People had left God out of their reckoning, and so came the cry of despair. What could they do? Nothing – but God could, and did act, to start to put His world to rights – by the constant reminders in the teaching of Jesus, by His self-sacrifice on the Cross and by the Resurrection which gives us all the opportunity of new life in the constant presence of our great and loving God.

As St Paul told the Corinthian Church ‘Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!’

I can’t finish this talk – or begin anything else – without reading you some of the words of the hymn “Great is thy faithfulness”

Great is thy faithfulness, O God my Father,
there is no shadow of turning with thee.
Thou changest not, thy compassions, they fail not;
as thou hast been, thou forever wilt be. Refrain:
Great is thy faithfulness!
Great is thy faithfulness!
Morning by morning new mercies I see;
all I have needed thy hand hath provided.
Great is thy faithfulness, Lord, unto me!

David Hawken. Broadcast on RCF Poitou 23 Jan 2023