The start of a year is the time to reflect on history. We remember the highlights of the previous year. The good things, the bad things, and perhaps even the mundane things. Each year we look forward, in light of our past, with new goals in mind.
This time of year Stacey and I take time to think through how we want this year to be different than the last. “What do we need to do different this year?,” we ask one another. We go through our list of things that we wish to change. Some of those things are small things, and some are rather large and far reaching things.
We do all of this being hardly mindful of the fact that we presuppose that there is possibility for change, that things can, in fact, be different. Did you know that this way of thinking was introduced to humanity thanks to the Old Testament? Prior to the belief of the ancient Hebrew people, civilizations everywhere believed that each year everything would repeat itself. Ancient Near Eastern worldview embraced the idea that time was not linear, but cyclical. This means that they believed each year would be like the years previous and that history would repeat itself over and over again. They believed that nothing really changed and that there was no possibility for a different outcome day after day, year after year.
It is because of God’s revelation to the Hebrew that we can believe that things can, in fact, be different—that things can change. This is a simple, yet profound truth (often times the simple things that often go overlooked are the most profound realities of life).
So what was it about Hebrew thought that challenged this? What was it about Israel’s God that made the Hebrew concept of linear time replace the concept of cyclical time? It was the idea of God’s transcendence: that God existed outside of time and space; that God was not confined or dictated by time or space like everything in the created order. This means that God, being outside of time, is able to extend his proverbial arm into time and space and do something new. Because God’s activity is dictating by nothing (which is one of the reasons why his name is “I Am” (Ex 3:14)), he can work in the world in ways unknown to days past.
So what’s the practical application of this? Easy, there is hope for change. We need this good news today, as we engage a broken world that seems to continue down it’s downward spiral to self-destruction. We’re accustomed to saying, “That situation will never change, it’s been that way for centuries.” The biblical worldview says, “No!”. The biblical worldview says that God, who can do as we wills, can reach into history and bring forth new things. We can ask one another, “What do we want to do different this year?,” and its not in vain.
There is hope for change this year, but only with the living, transcendent, I Am.
