I trust that one of your resolutions this year is to be in worship with fellow believers every week. If you do, at least you have kept your resolution for at least one week.
With all those happening in our country and in Dumaguete in particular for the past year, how do we approach year 2012? Will we approach it boldly, confidently, expectantly? Or will we approach it with fear and apprehension?
It’s like the husband who said to his wife one day, “I’ve noticed that you always carry my photo in your handbag to the office. Why?” His wife said, “When there is a problem, no matter how impossible, I look at your picture and the problem disappears.” The husband puffed himself up and said, “You see how much you really need me?” And his wife answered, “Yes, I look at your picture and say to myself, ‘What greater problem can there be than this one?!’”
Our text from the prologue of the Gospel of John puts the emphasis not on our past, but on our future. Not on our regrets, but on our possibilities.
Let me quote from this magnificent passage: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made . . . He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.” What a positive theme as we face the year 2012.
In this passage, the focus is not on what we have been, or even what we are now. Rather it focuses on what we can be: “Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God…” Deep in our hearts we want to be more than we are today. We can live the next 365 days confidently aware that our life matters knowing that God is with us and that we can do all things through Christ Jesus who strengthens us.
Tony Buzan in his book Power of Verbal Intelligence
gives us a wonderful example of the potential each of us brings into the world. He tells the story of the origins of the Suzuki method that has helped millions of children learn to play the violin. It begins with a Japanese teacher, musician and instrument maker named Suzuki. Suzuki had two moments in his life when he gained life-changing insights.
His first revelation came when he was visiting a building that served as a giant incubator for thousands of Japanese songbirds known as larks. The breeders of these larks take literally thousands of eggs and incubate them in giant, warm, silent halls that act as a gigantic nest. There is only one sound that the tiny songbirds hear as they break through the shells of their eggs. It is the sound of another lark, a very special adult lark that is chosen because of its singing ability.
Suzuki noticed to his amazement that every little chick that hatched automatically began to copy the master singer lark. Even more remarkable, after a few days, he observed that each chick, having started out by purely copying songs, began to develop its own variations on the original Master Song. The breeders wait until the chick musicians have developed their own styles, and then select from them the next Master Singer, and so the process continues.
“Astounding!” thought Suzuki. “If a bird’s tiny, tiny brain can learn so perfectly, then surely the human brain, with its vastly superior abilities, should be able to do the same and better!”
This line of reasoning led Suzuki to his next revelation: every Japanese child learns to speak Japanese! When Suzuki pointed this out to his friends, they laughed and assured him they already knew that. “But No! No!” declared Suzuki, “They really do, and it’s amazing!”
“Suzuki was correct,” says Buzan. “Like Newton before him, Suzuki discovered something that was so obvious no one could see it that any baby, born in any country, automatically learns, within two years, the language of that country. This means that every normal baby’s brain is capable of learning millions of potential languages.”
Think about that for a few moments and you will realize what an amazing thing that is. Given the proper environment, the human creature is capable of acquiring an amazing amount of information and skills in a short time.
Can you imagine that each of us came into this world with so much mental and physical potential? The world is wide open for each of us to develop whatever gift God has given us. That means wider opportunities and possibilities are open before us for this year.
However, there is something more our Text is saying to us. We also have enormous untapped spiritual potential. The text tells us that whoever receives Christ and believes in his name has the potential to become a child of God.
It means that you and I have the potential to be like Christ. What an enormous responsibility. We have a potential within our hearts and souls for peace, a potential for joy, a potential for hope, a potential for love, a potential for forgiveness that is greater than we can possibly imagine.
We no longer have to live lives filled with inner conflict, anger, resentment, fear, hatred, guilt or rejection. By the power of God’s Holy Spirit, we can become new people, God’s people.
Sometimes this happens to people in a dramatic way. Sometimes it comes slowly that we really have to look for it if we want to see it. Sometimes it takes a calamity like the flood to see how people reach out to others.
It makes me praise God to see people helping those affected by the flood as they save lives and homes, or give money and food, or as they volunteer their time in giving and sorting out the clothes or in bringing drinking water. It continues to amaze me how God can work through people in wondrous ways in spite of who we are.
One of the victims of the flood said, “The volunteers are angels sent by God.”
As I see people visit the sick or those who are grieving, it strengthens my belief in a loving God. As I see people singing and praying together to worship, I see the Christ.
But before we become proud, remember, the right to be children of God is not something we earn. It is a gift from a loving, merciful God. Note again John’s words: “To all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.”
It’s not a matter of how often we come to God’s house, it’s not how often we read our Bibles, it is not how often we pray, it is not how many New Year’s resolutions we have fulfilled. We do not earn the right to be children of God. It is a gift.
I hope that as we begin this New Year, we are to realize that we are heirs to the throne, not because of anything we have done, but because of what Christ has done in our behalf.
We have enormous potential physically and mentally. We have even greater potential spiritually. We have the right to become a child of God, and, indeed, by our baptism, we are children of God. That’s something powerful to live up to. The right to live like Christ.
The psychologist Dr. Gordon Allport
of Harvard University used to stress the importance of understanding that we are in the process of “becoming”.
Many times we sing the hymn Because He Lives. This is a hymn of hope: “Because He lives, I can face tomorrow. Because He lives, all fear is gone. Because I know He holds the future, and life is worth the living just because He lives.”
In spite of what happens, we know we can go on because Christ lives. Thus, go forth into this New Year aware of who you are, and to Whom you belong.
