Day 47: The New & Old Are Part of the Whole Story
/Easter Sunday. The day we celebrate the ascension of Christ, the atonement of sins for generations to come.
And all I can think of is deviled eggs. They were by far the number one gunned-for pre-dinner treat at my grandparents’ annual Easter celebration. What does it say about me that when Easter Sunday has arrived, the pinnacle of the Christian faith, all I can think about are the deviled eggs that I haven’t had in at least 15 years?
I think it says that the longing for family and tradition and security and belonging and all things familiar never goes away.
I think it says that the longing for newness and for familiarity often co-exist.
And I think that tension is something to pay attention to.
We want to keep progressing in our parenting, our marriage, our culture, our church, our business growth, and in our personal growth. All of that progression requires embracing what’s new.
We also want to hold on to what is familiar and what we love in our parenting, our marriage, our culture, our church, our business growth, and in our personal growth. All of that familiarity requires knowing what we love and putting in the work to keep it around.
Is that okay? Is it okay to know what we love and keep it around, while also moving forward? I think that’s okay. I think that’s part of the whole story: embracing the what-has-been and what-is and what-will-be-ness of it all.
From the onset of creation, God knew how this would all go. Not only is He the beginning, middle, and end, but He created the beginning, middle, and end.
He wants us to hold on to what’s always been: His love, His promises, His goodness, His justice, His discipline.
He wants us to embrace what’s new: our ever-evolving selves, the gifts he gives us as he keeps us moving in our stories.
All of that—embracing what’s always been and embracing what’s new—is biblical. The Bible says to learn from what’s been and to let our ancestors inform our present and future. It also says to allow our minds to be continually renewed, it says to be confident in the new thing God is making.
We sacrificed something familiar for 47 days and we’re ready to get back to it, but maybe we enjoy the newness that the sacrifice brought to our lives.
We bring the familiar thing back to our lives, but maybe we’re looking at it in a new way.
We remember what the familiar thing gave us before Lent, but maybe we appreciate what the act of sacrifice gave us, too.
If we’re living the full human experience God has created us for, there will always be tension of embracing what’s already been and being excited and confident for what’s to come. God’s full story has the old and the new, the fresh and the stale, the then and the now. And if we can make space for that and be comfortable holding all of it, we’ll join God in that full story he has for us.
Luke 24:44-49
Then he said to them, “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.” Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures, and said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, and that repentance for the forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things. And behold, I am sending the promise of my Father upon you. But stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high.”
