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Give Us a Happy New Year, God

            You can’t stop it. You can’t slow it. You can’t change it. It permeates everything – every purchase by every customer of every Christmas gift every year, every cell of every organism on every planet in every galaxy, every crystal of salt slowly melting the ice on every winterized roadway, every idea you’ve ever had and every dream you’ll ever have, every activity this year and the rest of your life – so silently, so steadily that usually you aren’t aware of it. It is utterly oblivious to young and old, pain and pleasure, crying and laughing. It depends on nothing else on this earth for its power and therefore has power over all of it. Time. Time owns all. Except one. Time does not own God. Time cannot stop God, change God, or permeate God, and actually depends on God. God created night and day. God formed the constellations and sends planets in their orbit. God calls the sun forth each day and tucks it in at night. God (who himself is timeless) even made time stand still as reported in the Old Testament book of Joshua. God owns time.

            Looking ahead to 2008, therefore, we don’t bow down to the calendar and beckon father time to bestow blessings on us for another year, like begging the dealer for good cards. Time cannot bless us or curse us. Calendars cannot rule us or free us. Schedules cannot hinder us or help us. God can, and does. So, with Moses, who wrote Psalm 90, we turn both our anxiety and our anticipation to God on this day and pray to him: Give Us a Happy New Year, God.

To manage your time wisely

            When we pray to God, “Teach us to number our days aright, that we may gain a heart of wisdom,” we are talking about more than math. We don’t just count our days, but we ask God to teach us to account for them, to count them aright with wisdom. That’s time management. One time management enthusiast wrote the following:

“Imagine there is a bank that credits your account each morning with $86,400. It carries over no balance from day to day. Every evening it deletes whatever part of the balance you failed to use during the day. What would you do? Draw out every cent, of course!! Each of us has such a bank. Its name is TIME. Every morning, it credits you with 86,400 seconds. Every night it writes off, as lost, whatever of this you have failed to invest to good purpose. It carries over no balance. It allows no overdraft. Each day it opens a new account for you. Each night it burns the remains of the day. If you fail to use the day’s deposits, the loss is yours. There is no going back. There is no drawing against the ‘tomorrow.’ You must live in the present on today’s deposits. Invest it so as to get from it the utmost in health, happiness and success! The clock is running. Make the most of today” (Dan Simpson, “The Gift of Time,” June 8, 1998 via Homiletics web site).

            When time management is described as investing time – what you don’t properly invest goes poof! into non-existence – I tend to find myself feeling disorganized, even wasteful, with my time. Do you? That month when you were distracted because of a personal crisis and didn’t even put in an average effort at work. That week of exams at school for which you could have studied better. That day you promised to spend with someone special but didn’t. That hour you were too drunk to remember. That minute when you forgot to thank God. That split-second decision when you said “yes” but ever since then you wish you would have said “no.” What a waste. Investments lost. Taking a gift from God and throwing it in the trash with a shrug of the shoulders, “Oh, well, maybe next time.” To which God responds with displeasure, “You rob me” (Malachi 3:8). We’re not just ruining opportunities for ourselves when we waste time. We’re robbing God, who has given us what he owns and we steal it. Then we sell it cheaply to support our habit of lazy, self-centeredness. So why should God give us more time? Why should he pump one more breath into our lungs while we sleep tonight? Why should he let us see the light of a new day, a new year?

            Because we pray: “Relent, O Lord … Have compassion on your servants.” Our hope is not found in making excuses or promising we’ll do better. Our hope is found in confessing our sins to God and pleading that he not punish our sins but change his course of action to one of compassion, just as he has promised. In this prayer we acknowledge that we want to be his servants but we have, instead, served the idols of self-interest. We turn back to him in repentance, trusting in his compassion. “Satisfy us in the morning with your unfailing love,” we pray to God, “that we may sing for joy and be glad all our days.” To be satisfied in the morning is to lie in bed after the alarm and look forward to the day instead of dreading it – because of God’s unfailing love. To be satisfied in the morning is to greet the day with courage and confidence that what was wrong yesterday is going to be right today – because of God’s unfailing love. To be satisfied in the morning is to jump out of bed with the joy of sins forgiven by Jesus’ death and the joy of strength to do God’s will through Jesus’ resurrection – because of God’s unfailing love. As much as the clock ticks and ticks and ticks without fail, God’s love beats and beats and beats from a heart that once bled his own blood for sinners. We are not slaves to the tyranny of the urgent but are servants of a compassionate God for whom time is not a span of moment but an opportunity, an opportunity for us to be satisfied with his unfailing love and sing for joy that every minute of every day is both from him and for him. There is our hope for 2008. Give Us a Happy New Year, God.

            God owns us, and God owns time. God gives us time to be a blessing. So the Bible cheers, “Be very careful, then, how you live – not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity” (Ephesians 5:15). Remember the description of time as a daily deposit of $86,400 and what we don’t invest we lose? There’s a better, more Biblical, way to see time management as a compounding deposit like rollover minutes on a phone plan. By God’s gracious management our time is never lost. “My times are in your hands,” we pray with one Psalm writer (Psalm 31:15). Look to God to rollover your wasted time. He is waiting to teach you wisdom to use more of your minutes in 2008. Give Us a Happy New Year, God.

To do your work successfully

            The Chairman and CEO of Coca-Cola delivered a speech a decade ago, an excerpt of which teaches about time and work. He said, “At the Coca-Cola Company, we have built and grown for more than 110 years. Remaining disciplined to our mission has brought us to remarkable places. Not long ago, we did some research and came up with an interesting set of facts. A billion hours ago, human life appeared on Earth. A billion minutes ago, Christianity emerged. A billion seconds ago, the Beatles performed on The Ed Sullivan Show. A billion Coca-Colas ago was yesterday morning. And the question we are asking ourselves now is: What must we do to make a billion Coca-Colas ago be this morning (excerpted from Vital Speeches of the Day, January 15, 1997, p. 201)?” Although his math calculating the origin of the world is unacceptable, his point is inspirational: success is closer than we sometimes think. So, how close is success for you? Retirement, a new job, a new boyfriend, a new doctor, a new boyfriend, a new hairdo, graduation, losing 10 pounds, vacation, giving up a bad habit? Those all can contribute to success at work but here is the key to success at work: “May the favor of the Lord our God rest upon us; establish the work of our hands for us – yes, establish the work of our hands.”

            The Bible uses the word “establish” to convey that God brings something forth and fixes it securely. It highlights the wisdom and strength of God. For example, Job 25:2 says, “Dominion and awe belong to God; he establishes order in the heights of heaven.” Something is solid because of God. This also applies to promises that God makes, so it adds an element of faithfulness as well. All of these come into play with the prayer from Psalm 90 that asks God to “establish the work of our hands.” Our hands? Yes, but not ours alone. They are never alone. God takes our hands in his and, with wisdom, strength, and faithfulness makes our work firm and secure – successful. Therefore, success in our work is closer than we sometimes think. And to what kind of work does this apply?

            Consider this report from one Bible study group written by its pastor:

We sit with our Bibles open … An unlikely collection has formed on the table: an OSHA manual, a coach's whistle, a mud-flap, a college textbook. We have each brought a symbol of whatever it is we do with most of our time. We meet to discern over each item, each activity, each place, each second, the call of Jesus. “This, too, is mine.Any of you who does not give up everything he has cannot be my disciple,” Jesus cried (Luke 14:33). “Call nothing your own. Give me your sin, your shame, your fear, your sorrow, your death. Come on. Hand it over. Your life, your dear ones, your present moment, your every hope. Hold nothing back. Give me everything.” In the peace of forgiveness and the stubborn joy of knowing him, in the righteousness that is from him not from us, and in this sanctuary as large as the world… we mean to. Diane sighs as I select the mouse to her old computer to begin the conversation. She enters patient records into the computer system of the local hospital; she struggles with the idea that her anonymous record keeping is what God calls her to do. Her altar guild and her prayer chain, these have to do with faith.  But I wonder out loud what might happen to the patients if she does not enter the data accurately. Everyone in the room knows. Someone groans. “What happens to people, Diane, if you do not do this with meticulous care?” I have more I’d like to say to Julie, modestly clutching a diaper, than merely extolling the virtues of motherhood.  “Jesus is calling you in the cries of your baby. He receives your devotion and takes your care directly from your hand. With such sacrifices God is pleased, through your trust in him.” I examine a shoehorn and paraphrase Luther, “What God wants from a Christian shoemaker is well-made shoes, not shoes with little crosses on them.” And again, with a plumber's wrench: “Do you hear it?  It speaks to you every passing day, ‘Friend, use me for someone's good.’” About the farmer’s gloves or the grocer’s inventory: “The donut on my table this morning, let’s talk about how it got there.” I like to think that with each symbol I hold up, the members of the class are learning important things about what God is up to in the world” (Paustian, Mark, “Unleashing Our Calling: Today’s Christians Find Fulfillment in Their Vocations, Symposium on Vocation at Wisconsin Lutheran Seminary; September 18-19, 2006).

            Get it? Your work is God’s work, which happens not only in the church but in God’s larger sanctuary of the entire world. God is at work in the world and his work happens wherever his people use their God-given gifts and opportunities. “The work of our hands” is everything different believers do using our different skills in our different callings. When we pray, “May your deeds be shown to your servants,” it means we look for God’s works of salvation like the birth of Jesus, his life, death,a nd resurrection, we focus on baptism and the Lord’s Supper, but we also notice God’s handiwork right here in our hands. We entrust him with everything we do both as a “please” (help me with this, God) and a “thank you” (this is for you, God). That’s success, measured not in pie charts, spread sheets, awards or promotions but in the faith, hope, and love we receive from God and reflect to others in our work.

            2008 is a leap year. I guess that means that even time isn’t so perfect that it doesn’t need adjusting once in a while. We need adjusting, too, and so with the prayer of Psalm 90 on our hearts and lips we go to God in repentance, pencil him into every minute of our calendars, and give him our hands to work to his glory wherever we are. God owns our time and manages it. God owns our work and gives it success. God owns us and loves us without fail. Give Us a Happy New Year, God. Amen.

Preached at Grace Lutheran Church, Milwaukee, WI (www.gracedowntown.org) on December 31, 2007

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Grace Evangelical Lutheran Church | 1209 North Broadway Milwaukee, WI 53202 | (414) 271-3006

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