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Ecclesiastes 3:1-13; Colossians 2:1-7; Matthew 9:14-17

There are certain things about our life that are inevitable. It is inevitable that to live one has to be born. And it is also inevitable that if a person is to be born, then that person is going to die. And the writer of Ecclesiastes also wrote about many other inevitabilities in life. He wrote about how certain it is that there will be plantings as well as uprootings, killings as well as healings, weeping as well as laughter, and war as well as peace. Back as far as 2500 years ago this amazing wise man, known in scriptures as The Preacher, wrote these truths in the form of a poem; "That there is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven."

The Bible tells us that there isn't much that we can do to change this cycle of life. However, the scriptures do offer suggestions to us as to how we may cope with this cycle of life and, rather than being victims of it, be victors over it, instead.

I am reminded of how King Xerxes, the great ruler of one of the world's greatest empires, thought that he was so powerful that even the tide would obey his command. So, he went down to the ocean shore with all of his armies and court and had his army line up at attention along the edge of the ocean at low tide. And, spreading out his arms, his scepter in his right hand, great King Xerxes raised his voice to the ocean and commanded the tide to stay out.

Well, needless to say, within an hour or so his army was up to its knees in water. And within two hours they were up to their waist. And, within three hours the army had to swim to shore. And Xerxes went home, having learned a valuable lesson: that he wasn't a god, after all; that he couldn't control the tides anymore than he could control the earth's movement around the sun, nor the winds blowing from the four corners of the earth.

And, likewise, as much as we would like to slow down the movement of time, as much as we would like to preserve our years, here we are again, at the end of another year, getting ready, again, to sing the familiar words to Auld Lang Sine.

But, when you think about it, none of us would really want it any other way. As much as we wish we could turn back the hands of time, doing so could be a very risky thing, indeed. I read the strange account, the other day, of a woman out in Virginia who actually grew backwards, mentally.

She had grown normally, married, and had three children. Life was fine until the husband and father died when the children were in high school The mother doubled her devotion to her children. But, at the same time, she started to exhibit some strange behavior. She changed her closes to those of a girl of twenty, joined in her children's parties and fun.

In a few years the children noticed that as they grew older their mother was growing younger. Psychiatrists call it "personality regression," which means "a person walking backwards."	Usually such people stop going backward after they have reached a certain mental age. But not this woman. She slipped backward at the rate of one year for every three or four months of time that went forward. Although she was 61 years old she acted and talked like a six year old. She was sent to a mental institution where she insisted on wearing short dresses, playing with toys, and babbling like a child.

Then she became like a three-year-old; she spilled her food, crawled on the floor, and cried "Mama." Backward still farther to the age of one, she drank milk curled up like a tiny baby. Finally, she went back over the line and died.

So, it is important that we accept the movement of time, not seeing it as a curse, but, rather, as a part of God's gift of life that may be coped with if we but accept the power of God's Spirit in our life.

Our Old Testament lesson for today tells us that God "has set

eternity in the hearts of humanity; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end." This is a fascinating thought, to think that God has set eternity into our hearts. In other words, we, among all other creatures, are the only creatures capable of contemplating eternity, at least as far as we know.

Have you ever thought about eternity? Usually when I think about eternity I begin to wonder about such things as where I came from and where I will go after this life. I even begin to ask such questions as "where did God come from?" and "Where and when was God before God created time?" And then I have even wondered if it was possible to ask such a question, even though I have asked it.

And these are very healthy questions for us to ask. It is the desire to ask questions like these which aid us in our search for the knowledge of God. The sad thing about this is that there are many persons who never do ask these sorts of questions; persons who never allow themselves to sense the eternity God has placed in their hearts, and, so, never feel the urge to find the answers. For the questions are never asked. For such persons, never sensing that there is something within them that wants to reach out to God is a terrible tragedy, indeed.

And, yet, even for we who feel the tug of eternity within us, even we who sense that there is more to life than life, can not fully understand eternity, nor know God in God's fullest. For we are finite and God is eternal. As soon as we think we knew what God is like, another door opens to God's personality revealing things we never dreamed of.

The celebration of New Year's is like a two edged sword. Certainly, with the coming of a new year we are given the chance to start over again, to make a new beginning. That's where the idea of New Year's Resolutions comes in. But this can also be very challenging. For as we begin this New Year we know that God is calling us new and creative acts of faithfulness.

In our gospel lesson for today, Jesus told his disciples that you don't put new wine into old wineskins, or the old wineskins would burst. What Jesus was telling them was that even though the old ways were good and honorable, people had to be prepared to accept the new things that were coming because of Jesus' coming into their midst as Lord and Savior. And to try to fit these new things into the context of the old would destroy the old and waste the new.

Certainly, as this new year comes upon us, we know that God has prepared some new good things for us. But to appreciate these things, we must be willing to set the old aside. We must be as flexible to growth as new wineskins.

Someone once said that when we stop growing, when we stop changing, that will be the day that we die.

May God help us to continue growing. May God help us to continue changing in the days and months ahead. Amen.