Here we are, facing a new year…but already, rather than feeling we are on the brink of a new and exciting future, most of us are dreading, even fearful, what this week or this year may bring. How can we find the courage to go forward into this year?
Paul wrote to the Philippians in 3:12-14 Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own- But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.
So, what does it mean to press on?
We are a family who loves stories, and so I thought of Tolkien’s Sam and Frodo struggling to the last ounce of their strength to get up the mountain.
“I’ll get there, if I leave everything but my bones behind,” said Sam. “And I’ll carry Mr. Frodo up myself, if it breaks my back and heart.”
That is pressing on!
Or little Reepicheep from C.S. Lewis Voyage of the Dawn Treader:
“My own plans are made. While I can, I sail east in the Dawn Treader. When she fails me, I paddle east in my coracle. When she sinks, I shall swim east with my four paws. And when I can swim no longer, if I have not reached Aslan’s country, or shot over the edge of the world into some vast cataract, I shall sink with my nose to the sunrise.”
Even Lewis himself kept his eyes on the goal:
“The Christian says, ‘Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists…If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. If none of my earthly pleasures satisfy it, that does not prove that the universe is a fraud. Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing…I must keep alive in myself the desire for my true country, which I shall not find till after death; I must never let it get snowed under or turned aside; I must make it the main object of life to press on to that country and to help others to do the same.”
The early church father Augustine expressed a similar sentiment:
“I look forward, not to what lies ahead of me in this life and will surely pass away, but to my eternal goal. I am intent upon this one purpose, not distracted by other aims, and with this goal in view, I press on, eager for the prize, God’s heavenly summons. Then I shall listen to the sound of Your praises and gaze at Your beauty ever-present, never future, never past. But now my years are but sighs. You, O Lord, are my only solace. You, my Father, are eternal. But I am divided between time gone by and time to come, and its course is a mystery to me. My thoughts, the intimate life of my soul, are torn this way and that in the havoc of change. And so it will be until I am purified and melted by the fire of Your love and fused into one with You.”
So how do we, in a world reeling from a pandemic, divided by politics, increasingly deceptive and violent-
“press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus,”
“make it the main object of life to press on to that country and to help others to do the same,”
(Stay) “intent upon this one purpose, not distracted by other aims, and with this goal in view, I press on, eager for the prize, God’s heavenly summons?”
There is only one way- Hebrews 12: 1-2, “Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.”
LOOKING TO JESUS!
Not to any human leader, cause, political party, ideology!
He is the ultimate example of pressing on- He endured through all the hate, hurt, pain, and even death until He WON and was seated at the right hand of God. He did not overcome by trying to overthrow- He overcame by laying down His life.
Our instructions for 2021 have not changed. Jesus said, “A new commandment I give to you that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another.” John 13:34
1 John 3:16 By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers.
We have one job in this new year- to love like Jesus.