All Things New Again

It’s amazing to me how our lives can be marked and defined by just a few days.  We live 365 days a year, 3,652 days in a decade, many will live over 30,000 days in a lifetime… but for most people there will really only be a handful of days that truly define their lives. 

Probably for many of you reading, today marks the anniversary of one of those day.  September 11, 2001, as one song calls it, the day the world stopped turning.  While I know those who distinctly remember the day Kennedy was assassinated, I’ve heard stories from people who remember the bombing on Pearl Harbor, for my generation 9/11 was one of those defining days.  People can tell you exactly where they were and what they were doing.  How they felt and how their perception changed.  What they feared and what they clung to.  I was a senior in high school, and it was one of my mornings to anchor the school announcements on our closed-circuit TV system.  I walked into the office to pick up the announcements to be shared for the day just in time to watch the second plane hit the World Trade Center.  It seemed unreal, and at the time I remember there being much confusion as to how an “accident” like that could occur only for the anchors to quickly switch gears when the second tower was hit with much of the world already watching- it was clearly no longer a freak accident.  I remember none of our classes did anything that day but stay glued to the TV (even my math teacher- and NOTHING stopped him!) but as the bell schedule would have it, during each passing period something more tragic would happen.  In the 4 mins it took to switch from one period to another it happened that the plane hit the Pentagon.  The next passing period the plane went down in PA.  The next transition one of the towers collapsed.  It seemed unreal and terrifying.  I remember sitting in my government class as President Bush addressed the nation and realizing he was speaking from Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana.  That was the base where my grandpa was last stationed before his retirement from his Air Force career, and I had been there on the base with him a number of times.  That hit close to home for me, and I remember being incredibly concerned for a cousin’s husband who worked at the Pentagon at the time, and another cousin who worked in New York.  I had been in Washington DC twice that summer for two different leadership conferences, and I knew the D.C. I had seen that summer would never be the same.  But I also remember the stories of hope and healing that came in the days and weeks and months to follow.  Out of tragedy came stories of beauty and hope.  We saw unity in our nation that we hadn’t seen for a long time, and patriotism became popular again.  Even amid all that was difficult, new beautiful things were happening.

While they are days that define us as a nation, there are also those few days that define us individually as well.  My wedding day is one, the day (a) was born is another (though my health complications following his delivery made a lot of that day kind of fuzzy haha), and the day we left ministry is another.  I can tell you exactly what I was doing and what I was wearing when I got the call from my husband that he needed to talk to me immediately.  I remember the feelings that gripped my heart and the fears that surrounded me.  I remember the details of how that day played out and the conversations with each person I talked to.  And much like 9/11- I knew our lives as we knew them, would never be the same.   

I have a confession to make… for years I have had a “celebrity crush” on country singer Brad Paisley.  However, one of my very favorite songs of his really isn’t very well known.  It is a duet he wrote and sings with Sara Evans called “New Again” and it was recorded as a part of a project to go with the movie “The Passion of the Christ.”  It depicts a conversation between Jesus and his mother, Mary, at the time of his crucifixion.  The chorus of the song says

“Whatever happens, whatever you see,

Whatever your eyes tell you has become of me,

This is not, it’s not the end.

I am making all things new again.”

This weekend marked one year since that defining day in our lives.  And as I looked around at our life, with tears in my eyes 365 days later, all I could think were the words to that chorus.  We gathered one year later in a new home, surrounded by new friends who are our new church leadership, three months in to a new ministry, eagerly anticipating the hiring of more new ministry staff, and as the tears ran down my face, the words to that chorus played over and over in my heart.  It was true, He is making all things new again.  Some really hard things had happened, and my eyes had given one perception of what was going to happen to my life.  But Jesus knew it was not the end of our ministry, He is making all things new again.

Even the old, beat up piano is looking new again next to a freshly painted wall and with some decor around it.

 I doubt I’m the only girl out there who has had one of those defining days… where life as you knew it was forever changed.  But praise God that He keeps his promises, He makes all things new.  Out of heartache and tragedy he brings hope and healing.  Out of brokenness He brings beauty.  When you think it is the end, He is starting a new beginning.  All things new again…

“And he who was seated on the throne said, ‘Behold, I am making all things new.’ Also he said, ‘Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.’” Revelation 21:5