All Things New

He didn’t carry me over the threshold.  (He said his back was still recovering from his bowling accident on the day of our wedding and, to be honest, I’m not a small person.)  But there we were – standing in our brand new apartment, brand new wedding gifts waiting to be put away, beginning our brand new life as husband and wife.

EVERYTHING was so new.  Apart from some hand-me-down furniture, our new apartment was filled with new, crisp linens, gleaming kitchen utensils and appliances freshly unwrapped from my wedding showers and our wedding day.

I basked in the sweet memory of friends and family – their excitement and well wishes for us expressed in so many ways.  Even though we only had 6 weeks to plan our wedding, our friends still managed put together two wedding showers, complete with fun, silly “shower games”, decadent cake and … GIFTS – piles of GIFTS (and a mess of wrapping paper and ribbons too)!  Pots, pans, dishes, towels, sheets, appliances, silver!

That was 54 years ago.

Then and Now

I still have some of those items.  However, today those soft new towels are now in the rag bag, waiting to mop up spills.  My beautiful new Better Homes & Gardens cookbook is now falling apart and its pages are stained with ingredients of the food that it faithfully taught me how to cook.  My once gleaming cookie sheets are now blackened from the oven’s heat, having baked thousands of home-made cookies.

And me?  My once shiny, thick, dark brown hair has thinned and is now silver-gray.  My once flawless skin is now wrinkled and saggy.  And my legs that so effortlessly climbed stairs or hiked mountains now require hand rails to carry me upward.

“Therefore we do not lose heart.  Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day.  For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.  So we fix our eyes not on what is seen but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.” (2 Corinthians 4:16-18)

Yes, my body (and my wedding gifts) may be getting old and “wasting away”.  That’s really okay.  It’s just part of life.  It’s all just temporary anyway.  My tattered wedding gifts will eventually end up in the trash.

But in me, there is something else going on, hidden and unseen.  Jesus is my eternal source of new life.  He is the spring of life that lives deep within my spirit.  If I block that spring from flowing, the water will become stale and old.  BUT if I let that spring bubble up from the depths of my being, it will be a constant source of fresh, new life.

So, the older I get, the newer I get.  Pretty good deal, if you ask me!