What a difference 10 years has made. Then – there was panic hovering just below the surface, fearing that major computer systems around the nation (world) would bog down due to outmoded computer code that stored year dates as 2 digit numbers (for example 99 and 00) rather than 4 digits (1999 and 2000). Ancient history now, but everyone was on alert, anxiously awaiting the stroke of midnight and the possibility of utilities shutting down, banking systems grinding to a halt and planes falling out of the air (for the more paranoid). Some people did profit quite handsomely from the scare, namely those who knew the older programming languages –they were in high demand for a high price!
For those of us who lived through it, 2000 arrived with nary a whimper. While that “tragedy” never came to past, an unexpected one arrived about nine months later – the infamous 9/11 which has branded itself into our shared history. For older people, they know well where they were when they first heard the news of … Kennedy’s death, the first man to walk on the moon, Richard Nixon’s resignation. But, for all alive, the memory of 9/11 is the new “where were you …” reference point in time.
But, the greatest historical event, the one of personal epic proportions, lies in none of these things. For the Christian, that is. The dividing line of history is found on the day when one solitary life is transformed through faith in the simple, gracious act – Christ’s dying on a wooden, Roman cross—that day is the pivot point, the threshold between before and after, the true A.D. and B.C. of a person’s life. Is there any more profound day in all of your history. Spiritual death gave way to life, guilt was replaced by forgiveness, condemnation eclipsed by justification. The old consumed by the New. Thank God! Praise God!
May this new year, 2010, this new decade, find you drawing closer to the Lord Jesus Christ, your Master and the Lover of your soul!
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