Becoming New

“Therefore,  if anyone is in Christ,  he is a new creation;  old things have passed away; behold all things have become new.” 2 Corinthians 5:17  (NKJV)

A lot  of you may not  remember pay phones, but once they could be found  just about anywhere,  readily available in an emergency, or just to make a personal call since not many people had a telephone at home before  the nineteen fifties.  I remember going to a writers conference at  a New York City hotel with hundreds of attendees. At a break in the sessions, we would stand in a waiting line at the bank of wall telephones in the lobby and wait our turn  to put a quarter in the slot in the phone  and make our call.

A word for things like pay phones  and typewriters is “obsolete,” because they’re no longer  a part of  our everyday life. We have discarded them and have moved on to newer versions of them. The apostle Paul knew well the old ways of  the Corinthian Christians and admonished them to become new creations in Christ.  Today’s focus text makes  us think  of  an earlier time in our lives,  when certain activities and habits were considered natural to us.  But they have now become our “old things” and have been left behind because they are  obsolete, serving no purpose in our spiritual growth.

The new version of ourselves that Christ  created  now makes us look at the world  in a different way.  Once we saw our shortcomings as insurmountable and thought we could never live up to the standards Jesus had set for those who belong to Him.  Old habits die hard, but thanks be to God,  when we submitted to Him, He cleared  out the old and made us new. The newly created person we  are  now has a sense of  being able to overcome our faults and do all things through Christ  (Philippians 4:13).

None of us  longs  for the old pay phones, or  electric typewriters, or  leaky fountain pens. Just as change has overtaken these gadgets, so change must  overtake our  daily lives. Christ’s power  is able to  make us new in Him, giving us a new heart that  makes  our old ways  totally obsolete.

Always,

Judith

“Create in me a clean heart, O God,
and renew a right spirit within me.”
Psalm 51:10