Quick Summary:

It’s a nice myth to believe in, if you can manage, our culture’s myth of new beginnings on New Year's Day: that the clock started over at midnight, that circumstances that dominated my life up until 12 o’clock last night have been swept away by one tick of the clock, that the world is fresh, the tablet is clean, the road open. But I, for one, have never quite been able to pull it off. If experience is any guide, there’s a very good chance that in spite of deep intentions, my resolve will be challenged before the sun sets at 4:28 this afternoon.

“If the future were not the promise of Jesus Christ but the predictable outcome of present trends,” writes James Kay, “despair would overwhelm us... If trends predict anything, it is that death and dissolution bring an end to every human heart and hope.”
But the message of the gospel “…is that we can never take our own projections more seriously than God’s promises. When we least expect it and when there is no evidence for it, God’s power comes into this godless world in ways the world itself could never predict or foresee.”