“In His Hands”
Psalm 139:16

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Pastor Kevin Vogts
Trinity Lutheran Church
Paola, Kansas
The Circumcision and Naming of Our Lord–New Year’s Day—January 1, 2020

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

The text for our New Year’s meditation is from Psalm 139, which we read earlier: “All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to pass.”

This year is an especially significant New Year.  It seems only yesterday that we entered the 2000’s.  But, this year we are celebrating not only the changing of the year, but already we are closing out the teens and entering the 20’s of the 21st century.

The newspapers and television are full of reviews of the past year and decade, and predictions about the future.  But, what about you, personally?  What has this past year and the first two decades of the 21st century brought for you?  And what for you does the future promise?

The folk song says, “He’s got the whole world in his hands, he’s got you and me brother in his hands.”  As we enter the “roaring 20’s” of the 21st century, he indeed has got your life in his hands.  As Psalm 31 says, “My times are in your hands.”

Today’s Epistle Reading from the eighth chapter of Romans assures us, “And we know that God works all things together for the good of those who love him.”  As you look back over 2019, and the first two decades of the 21st century, and your entire life, it is easy to see the good in many blessed events: love, laughter, joy, happiness.  But, it is much harder to see the good at other times: illness, suffering, strife, struggle, pain, death.

If you have ever seen a cloth woven in a loom, you know that the front side presents a beautiful pattern, but the back side is a jumbled, knotted mess, with no discernable pattern at all.  There is a poem that compares our lives to such a weaving: “My life is but a weaving between my Lord and me . . .”

The poem beautifully explains how in this earthly life we look up toward heaven and see only the back side, the jumbled, knotted mess of our lives, with no discernable pattern that often doesn’t make sense.  But, God is looking down from heaven, and he sees the front side of the weaving of our days, the true pattern of our lives. And God is weaving all things together in our lives for our good, according to his pattern and plan.  “All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to pass. . .  my times are in your hands.”

The poem goes on to describe how, in God’s wisdom, the weaving of our days does indeed have many bright and happy colors: the joyous times of life.  But, according to God’s plan, the full pattern of our lives also contains contrasting, darker colors: times of sadness, suffering, sorrow.  The poem concludes that the Master Weaver needs both the brighter colors and the darker colors to create the full pattern of our lives.  However, we will not fully understand the pattern until we are no longer looking up at the backside of the weaving, but we are sitting beside him at the loom, looking back upon the weaving of our days.  As Paul says in 1st Corinthians, “Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully.”

In today’s Epistle Reading, Paul expresses, in four beautiful, simple words WHY you can have confidence as you enter the New Year: “If God is for us, who can be against us?” 

When things go wrong in your life this year, remember those four beautiful, simple words: “God is for us!”  God is not angry with you, he is on your side—God is FOR you!  And, no matter what happens, God is never punishing you, because your punishment is already paid in full by your Savior Jesus Christ.  As Isaiah says, “The punishment that brought us peace was upon him.”

“What, then, shall we say in response to this? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son, but gave Him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? . . .  Christ Jesus died for us, more than that was raised to life, and is at the right hand of God, interceding for us.  Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?  Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? . . . No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.  For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

“All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to pass.”  Whatever the New Year brings, whatever the coming decade, and the rest of the 21st century, and the rest of your life may hold, your times are in his hands.