What Do We Do With The New

As I walk through Media this morning, it is so clear that new life is abundant. Spring, it seems, has finally sprung! The sun is bright and warm. Trees are flowering. Birds are singing. Creation rejoices together in celebrating a new season marked with rebirth. As we enter into spring, it can be quite easy to witness the newness around us, and also very easy to believe the lie that while life changes around us, we are still the same old (insert your name here).

Science has proven that our bodies are constantly being made new throughout our lifetime. Our red blood cells completely regenerate in four months. Our outer layer of skin takes a mere two weeks. Some parts of our body can take quite a bit longer, like our bones, which take 10 years to be made completely new. Our hair takes two to seven years (though eventually some of us get to the point where it seems to fail to regenerate at all). 100 million new cells are born in our bodies every minute, taking the place of another 100 million that die. Even on a microscopic level, God is always present, and at work.

I’m encouraged by the song “Beautiful Things” by Gungor, which thematically approaches this same subject. The song explains that God constantly makes us new and beautiful, despite our self doubt, pain, or how we view ourselves. Funny enough, the lens of our eye is one of the few parts of our body that remains unchanged from birth throughout our lifetime. In our lens remaining constant, it seems that we have a choice to determine what we do with the new things being created in us and around us. Depending on our focus, many of these things may or may not be in plain view.

What is not up for question is the fact that God is constantly at work, and thus, it is His nature to make things new and better than before. What is up for question is what we do with that. Today, consider the focus of your lens through which you perceive the world around you. Are you living your life in the freedom of the newness God gives us? Are you embracing His grace? Or, are you mired in a mindset where you are still being afflicted by the things of yesterday, today? Are you stuck fixated on past seasons, failing to witness the new, abundant life God is creating in you and around you?

Faithfulness, is partnering with God in embracing the “new” that He is doing that can be as life changing as re-focusing yourself on Him and His will, or as simple as a breath of fresh air on a spring morning.

Sebastian Carpenter