A New Year with Old Friends

There are 94 entries in Webster's online dictionary for the the word "new," including the one we would use to describe the new year. "A beginning as the resumption or repetition of a previous act or thing, made or become fresh." Really the New Year is simply another day, an attempt to make something old look new or as the definition says, resuming an old activity in a fresh way. We give the word "year" its meaning, but in reality its just the day after December 30th, another day where the sun will rise and set, and yet we celebrate this as a special holiday. We celebrate it as a chance for us to start fresh or start over (New Years resolutions). Maybe we need to believe that this year will be better than the last, or that this year we will be better than we were last year, all with the hope of progress in mind because that is what this repetitious rat race is about right, progress?
And yet in that we find ourselves celebrating this "new day" with old friends. We surround ourselves with the familiar and the comfortable and in that find our compromise or middle ground. For me it was a wonderful New Year, a chance to spend time with all of my old friends (friends that I have known since my freshman year of college, 4 and 1/2 years ago) and hear about their new lives. It was a chance to have one last big taste of the familiar before I head off in to the vast unfamiliar, the new chapter of my life. The time I spent with them was refreshing, as if I was seeing them for the first time.

"Therefore, if anyone is in Christ he is a new creation; the OLD had gone, the NEW has come." 2 Corinthians 5:17