New Year's Eve

As the clock strikes midnight tonight, most of us will have our eyes glued to it's face. But out looking will be much different from the occasional glance we take at our wrist to see if we'll be on time for an appointment, or to see if it is time to start dinner. On this last night of the old year, when we gaze at the clock, we will become aware of an odd sensation rising up from some deep well within us. Normally, we use the clock as a reference point: we move according to the time, so that we won't be late. But tonight, it is not we who are moving. We sit in the company of friends, or perhaps by ourselves. The last minutes of the old year arrive, and suddenly, it is no longer us, but time itself that moves. For a brief moment we hear that otherwise silent stream of time murmur aloud as it plunges over the boundaries of this out-of-the-ordinary midnight. A person would have to be very unfeeling, very blasé, if they did not feel a little shiver run down their spine and perhaps even feel a little note of regret as it happens. But why is it on this night that we experience this completely different sense of time? I would like to suggest what might at first seem a rather simple, even ridiculous, answer.

I would like to suggest that the reason why we experience time so differently on this night from any other, is because our clocks are round! I know that sounds stupid, but please hear me out. You see, because we have round clocks, because the hands circle about and constantly return to their starting point, we acquire the illusion that life itself is that way, that there is always tomorrow, that everything in life repeats itself and that we can always start fresh tomorrow. What I haven't finished today by closing time, I'll leave to do tomorrow. In other words, the hands on my clock will make their circle tomorrow just as they did today.

On the last night of the year, however, we experience time in a very different way. Then, suddenly, time no longer moves in a circle - it moves in a straight line. there are no "year clocks" that turn over and start fresh at number one at the end of three hundred and sixty-five days. We would have to visualize a yearly clock quite differently, and in fact we do on our calendars. It has to be visualized more as a straight line on which each elapsed day, each finished year is loped off as it passes. All of our life we creep along this time line. We leave behind us one segment after another. The hand never returns to where it was before. Once decisions are made, we can never cancel them out. Once a moment is completed, it never returns.

In past segments of time, we may have held a certain job, we may have had some significant experience, we may have been married or divorced, we may have formed a friendship or wronged a friend. And now all this has become part of our history and part of our destiny also. Perhaps we would do things differently if we had it all to do over - but we don't; the past never returns. We must go on, dragging the luggage of our past with us. Even the gospel does not save us from that. It does not save us from the consequences of our actions. We must bear our past.

This line of time we're talking about, then, is like a long corridor with many doors. Year after year we open a new one. But on its other side there is no knob, no way to reopen it and retrace our steps. We can never go back. And then one day we come to the end of the corridor. Yet the circular line on the dial of our clocks never comes to an end. And so it gives us the illusion that time goes on forever.

This is the feeling that we become aware of on New Year's Eve - that every year, every day, every moment of our life is unique and unrepeatable, and that it is irrevocable; and that our time runs on and on until one day when it will run out. We sense our finiteness, our mortality. We become aware, more than usual, of the hurriedness of our life, that time is running out for us, and we think in the back of our mind, more than usual, "I haven't got the time . . . ." "I don't have enough time in my life to do what I want to do, to make of it what I want to make of it." And we become painfully aware that we must divide the limited time we have available. We can never prolong our time - we can only make the best use of it. As Shakespeare says, "That we shall die, we know; 'tis but the time and drawing days out, that men stand upon."

As this reality forces itself upon us, we experience a kind of shock. And in fact I wonder if all of our noisy New Year's Eve parties, all the alcoholic dulling of our senses, doesn't have the purpose of drowning out the sound of the passing of time. Isn't it really an effort to dull our consciousness to the terrible knowledge of our finitude? Don't the jokes and laughter serve to cover the pain of feeling that somehow life is slipping away from us? Yet reality is always there when the booze wears off, when the lights go back on and the noisemakers become silent. You can never quite escape reality. The problem of our mortality remains unchanged.

Real joy comes only when I am in harmony with myself and with the meaning of my life. Only when that is so will I escape the need to repress those needs by force.

Perhaps that is why some go to church on New Year's Eve - why we want to hear a word that comes from eternity, why we are impelled to pray. It's not because we are pessimists; it's not because we're straight-laced puritans who don't know how to have a good time, wile the others with the popguns and champagne are the optimists who affirm life. Those whom New Year's Eve drives to reflection are seeking joy, too - but from another source. We know that our mortality, our finitude ceases to be a source of anxiety and pain when we give our life to the Lord of time; when we place our life in His hands and are at peace with Him. I may have to suffer because of my past mistakes, but all of that lies behind me, all the wrong I have done can no longer separate me from Him. He sets it all straight. He can even take my mistakes and make it come out for good. And what lies ahead of me - these next three hundred and sixty-five days - I accept from His hand as a gift from the one who loves me so dearly. I know that nothing can happen to me, nothing can touch me that has not first passed through His hand, that will not be for my ultimate benefit and for His glorification.

And when the last milestone is reached, and I have come to the end of the corridor; when the veil is lifted - I know, too, that He will also be there waiting for me and I shall see Him face to face. Out of our sorrow, out of the pain of our mortality there shall come an inexpressible joy as we hear the footsteps of One approaching us from the other side and as we begin to see His figure drawing near to us, and as His glory becomes more clear to us. Out of this harmony with the Lord of time, there comes a wonderful joy that no longer needs to depend upon a repression of the knowledge of our finiteness, and of our sinfulness, a joy that does not have to hide the pain of our guilt and past regrets. Instead we may look to the New Year with real joy - joy in knowing our past is forgiven; and joy that lives in hope of what is yet to come from His hand, born out of the confidence that He is calling us, day by day, into a greater joy, as He molds and shapes us into His own image. And so may you have a truly joyous New Year!