Happy New Year, everyone! I hope you enjoyed your Christmas break as much as I did. It’s our first Moltmann Monday of 2011, and today’s excerpt comes from his book Jesus Christ for Today’s World. I found it fitting as we celebrate these last few days of Christmastide and ponder what it means that the Christ child has come among us. And it’s also a great rallying cry of hope and fresh starts as we begin a brand new year.
What happens for us and in us through Christ has two sides to it: in Christ we find God, and we find ourselves in Christ…If we live in Christ then we have this unique experience of God. God has arrived with us. He is so present, so close, that in him we live and move and have our being. If we live in Christ then we have this unique experience of the self: we have arrived at God. We are good, just and beautiful, like a newly made creature on the first day of creation. The ‘old things’ are the burden of injustice and violence that weighs us down; and now this can be thrown away like an old coat. The new thing which is the springtime of the whole creation has already taken hold of us. (page 136-137)
Of all the cleaning, organizing and re-prioritizing I’ve been doing over the past few days in the spirit of a blank calendar, most of all I’m hoping that I remember continually to toss off the “old things” that weigh me down, to throw them away like an old coat, and to remind myself that I have arrived at God, and God has arrived with us, and this transaction makes the whole world good, and just, and beautiful. What better start to the year could we possibly ask for?!
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