Scripture References: 2 Corinthians 5:16-21
It’s an old custom: on New Year’s Eve, while the clock strikes midnight, we think of our aspirations for the new year and try to enter the unknown future with a dream, looking forward to the fulfillment of some cherished desire. Today we once again welcome a new year. What do we desire for ourselves, for others, for everyone? What is the goal of all our hopes? The answer is almost always the same eternal word: happiness. Happy New Year! New happiness for a New Year! The particular happiness we desire is of course different and personal for each of us, but we all share in common the faith that this year, happiness might be around the corner, that we can look forward and hope for it.
But when is a person genuinely happy? After centuries of experience and everything we have learned about human beings, we have learned that we can only equate happiness with fleeting circumstances. Money, health, or success, for example don’t always last and when they are gone so is the notion of happiness. Clearly, physical comfort brings happiness, but not completely. Money brings happiness, but also anxiety. Success brings happiness, but also fear. It is striking that the more external happiness we have, the more fragile it becomes and the more intractable the fear that we will lose it and be left empty-handed. Perhaps this is why we wish each other new happiness in the New Year. The “old” happiness never materialized, something was always missing. But now once again the world looks ahead with a wish, a dream, a hope . . .
My goodness! The gospel long ago recorded the story of a man who became rich, built new barns to store his grain, and decided he now had everything necessary to guarantee his happiness! He was comfortable and at ease. But that night he was told: “Fool! This night your soul is required of you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?” (Luke 12:20). The gradual realization that nothing can be held onto, that ahead of us lies inevitable death and decay, is the venom which poisons the little and limited happiness that we do have. This is surely why we have the custom of making such a din of noise-makers, shouting, and loud laughter as the clock strikes midnight on New Year’s Eve. We are afraid of being alone and in silence when the clock strikes as the merciless voice of fate: one strike, a second, a third, and so on, so relentlessly, so evenly, so terribly, to the end. Nothing can change it, nothing can stop it.
Thus we have two truly deep and indestructible poles of human consciousness: fear and happiness, nightmare and dream. The new happiness we dream about on New Year’s Eve would finally be able to calm, disperse and conquer fear; we dream of a happiness which has no fear lurking deep within, a fear from which we are always trying to protect ourselves, by drinking, by keeping busy, by surrounding ourselves with noise. Yet the silence of that fear is still louder than any noise. “Fool!” Yes, the immortal dream of happiness is by nature foolish in a world infected by fear and death. At the highest points of human culture, people are well-aware of this. Only down below, at the bottom of human culture, do crowds go wild with noise and shouting, as if noise and feverish partying could bring happiness.
“In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it” (John 1:4-5). What this means is that the light cannot be swallowed-up by fear and anxiety, it cannot be dispersed by sadness and hopelessness; in other words it is not dependent on circumstances. In this vain thirst for momentary happiness, if only people would find within themselves the strength to stop, to think, to look at the depth of true life! If only they would listen to the words, to the voice calling to them eternally within those depths. If only they knew what constitutes genuine happiness. “And no one will take your joy from you” (John 16:22). Isn’t this what we dream about when the clock strikes midnight: joy that is beyond a happiness that cannot be taken away? But how rarely we reach such depth! How we fear it for some reason, and put it aside: “Not today, but tomorrow, or the day after, I’ll turn my attention to what’s essential and eternal; only, not today. There’s still time.”
But there is really so little time. Only moments go by before the arrow of time whizzes to its fateful target. Why delay? For right here, in our very midst, Someone stands beside us: “Behold, I stand at the door and knock” (Revelation 3:20). If we would only set aside our fear and look at Him, we would see such light, such joy (fruit of the Spirit), and such abundance of life that we would surely understand the meaning of that elusive and mysterious word that the world uses to describe “happiness.”
This new year let’s set the bar higher than the world does and pray for others to have a joyous rather than merely a happy New Year.
Unless otherwise noted, Scripture taken from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®, ESV © 2016 by Crossway Bibles.
Used by permission. All rights reserved.
FOR THE LOVE OF GOD 
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