In a year in which we focused on “all things new”, we had no idea how many new things we would have to endure.

“The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases;
his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness.” 

I breathlessly, without words, praise God for His steadfast love. It is the prayer of an often ungrateful but profoundly needy sinner who desperately needs the unfailing and resolute love of God to break through and do the heavy lifting.

There is, in this darkness, an opportunity to recognize my own neediness. There is a possibility to finally admit that I alone am not enough. There is a path on which I can walk toward the virtue of hope.

Hope is what the farmer carries each spring when the time for sowing seed is at hand. It is the same hope that he bears when the harvest comes in, and it is not enough to get through the winter. This is a hope grounded in the steadfast love of God, trusting in the One who has promised to never leave or forsake us, despite what the world looks like at the moment. 

His Mercies Never Come to an End

It is no accident that the birth of Jesus comes at what is, in our solar system, the darkest time on the calendar. On December 21, as the solstice changes, we experience “the shortest day of the year”, when the sun arises the latest and sets the earliest. It is into this dark world that the Light of all Nations is born.

In all of the challenges that we face, it is a mercy itself that our God, the Father of all mercies, never runs out of it. In a world of scarce resources, God has a limitless supply of mercy. 

The timing of the season of Advent feels very providential. Before we get to the gifting and the celebration and the festivities, we must drag our feet through the season of Advent. Advent is a time of resting, of fully recognizing the darkness, not only of the world outside, but of the darkness inside. It is here where we are to “prepare Him room”. It is here that we wait in the darkness and put on the practice of patiently waiting.

They are New Every Morning

But thank God, the darkness will not last forever. The sun will inevitably rise and the daylight will overtake the night. This is an undeserved wave of compassion granted to all of us who wait upon the Lord in difficult times. The morning is a daily reminder that all darkness is finite, and that even those who endure the darkest night will see the sun rise. 

In a year in which we focused on “all things new”, we had no idea how many new things we would have to endure. We awoke each day wondering what new battle we might have to face. We expected that all our needs would be supplied, but we knew not how. Some of us may have even found ourselves with needs we could not have predicted. Some too longed for the comfort of the past, the feelings of normalcy returning, rather than trying to adjust to a “new normal.” Perhaps we, experiencing too much “new” all at once, longed to return to simpler times, when we, as children, found ourselves pleased and happy with the monotony of predictable and reasonable life.

G.K. Chesterton wrote of this phenomenon in his essay, “The Ethics of Elfland”, that the promise of repetition was a reason for joy, just as the same thing repeated doesn’t bore our Lord, but delights Him. He writes: “Because children have abounding vitality,” he writes, “because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, ‘Do it again’; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, ‘Do it again’ to the sun; and every evening, ‘Do it again’ to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we. The repetition in Nature may not be a mere recurrence; it may be a theatrical encore.” 

Great is Your Faithfulness

We haven’t been given the full picture of what our future holds. We don’t know the minute by minute breakdown of 2021. The clock ticks on, tirelessly, without regard to our noticing it or not. Turning it back, or forward, makes no difference to our Lord. He will make the sun rise at 6:55 a.m. just as He made it rise at 5:55 a.m. And He will faithfully make it set each night, faithfully.

But we have this promise, too: in feast or fallow, God is there. Though He is more noticeable at the feast, He is working in the fallow as well. He is restoring the ground in which He will grow marvelous new things. And He is faithful to bear us through in the painful times, even those as simple as the end of Daylight Savings.

John Calvin, in his commentary on Lamentations 3 writes “We see then that God brings light out of darkness, when He restores His faithful people from despair to a good hope; yea, He makes infirmity itself to be the cause of hope ... a sense of our own infirmity draws us even close to Him; thus hope, contrary to nature, and through the incomprehensible and wonderful kindness of God, arises from despair.”

The Father of all mercies has given us this hope to carry on, to whatever may come this November, December, and beyond. Let us trust in the mercy of the faithful and steadfastly loving God of new things, who can, by breaking us down, restoring us, and remaking us into a new creation, make us say, with Jeremiah, “The Lord is my portion...therefore I will hope in Him (3:24).”

Micah Lovell is the General Editor of Worthy of the Gospel, a Songtime Publication. He is the headmaster of Abington Christian Academy, a Classical Christian School. 

He serves as a collaborator with Adam behind the teaching content on the radio and the articles on the Songtime website.