New Beginnings from A Broken Year
“2020 cannot end soon enough!”
How many times have you heard someone say this? I’m embarrassed to admit the amount of times that thought has crossed my mind over the past few months. From New Year’s resolutions, diets, and gym memberships, people seem to have a thirst for a fresh start. There is something deep within the human heart that longs for new beginnings.
A quick search of “Quotes on New Beginnings” will lead to an abundance of inspirational excerpts. Popular quotes such as T.S. Eliot’s, “Every moment is a fresh beginning” or “Be willing to be a beginner every single morning” by Meister Eckhart can motivate us towards a brand-new start. And possibly the most famous quote comes from Seneca, the mid-first century philosopher, “Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.”
Notice the span of time between these quotes—there’s a 2,000-year gap between Seneca and Eliot, and Eckhart lived nearly halfway between the two! What this tells us is desire for a new beginning is nothing new to the human soul.
A Broken Year
It’s not hard to arrive at the conclusion that 2020 was a broken year. On March 11th, the World Health Organization declared the coronavirus crisis a “pandemic.” Millions of human lives have been lost internationally, normal public life was suspended, and fear paralyzed many.
COVID-19 was not the only evidence of brokenness experienced in 2020. Racial division in our country seemed to increase as unrest and anger rose to the surface. And in an election year, politics seemed to continue to alienate us from each other.
And all of this was built on top of already existent issues such as crime, cancer, injustice, poverty, fractured relationships, stress, self-centeredness, and suffering. For many of us, it seemed as though 2021 really couldn’t arrive soon enough! Elizabeth McKinney in her article Five Emotions We All Might Feel In 2021 claimed, “The sheer pleasure that came when we tore the last page of December from our calendars was felt in every home, and we could see the glow ahead.”
As this new year was approaching, I spent time with God reflecting on the rollercoaster that was 2020. To my surprise, the year contained more brokenness than I had realized. On February 1st, I boarded a red-eye flight departing from Quito, Ecuador in eager expectation of being reunited with my family back home in Texas. I had spent the week experiencing firsthand, the powerful ministry of Compassion International in some of the most impoverished areas of South America.
On this flight, I was introduced to the news of a growing threat of a virus. Little did I know at the time, that this virus would become a worldwide pandemic. The next eleven months would be unlike anything I had experienced before. The disharmony over mask wearing, politics, and racial disparity often left me feeling like a pastoral piñata being hit back-and-forth until I felt like I was about to break.
“The disharmony over mask wearing, politics, and racial disparity often left me feeling like a pastoral piñata being hit back-and-forth until I felt like I was about to break.”
As fall arrived, 2020 continued to throw jabs at our family of five, from each of us testing positive for COVID, to caring for aging parents as their health deteriorated, to a vibrant young man in our church who took his own life. Experiencing blow after blow from 2020 isn’t unique to our family, many experienced more blows than we have. So this is not a comparison of wounds, rather a connection between weary people.
Brokenness and New Beginnings?
There’s an ancient Japanese practice of repairing broken pieces of pottery by mending the areas of damage with powered silver, gold, or platinum. This art is called Kintsugi, which is a method that transforms brokenness into something valuable. Kintsugi is a reflection of our current need for a new beginning.
Is it possible that beauty can be developed when God takes broken pieces of clay and repairs them to bring what we long for, a new beginning? For many of us, we are very aware of the need for God to repair broken pieces of our lives and mend the damaged areas into something beautiful (Rev. 21:5).
The prominence of newness in the Bible tells us something about God’s heart for new beginnings, but a careful look will also help us to better understand from what he brings new beginnings. God is in the business of bringing new beginnings from our circumstances of brokenness, our experiences of brokenness, and our failures that expose our brokenness.
Do we associate seasons of brokenness with new beginnings? Scripture does.
The Apostle Paul refers to us as jars of clay (2 Cor. 4:7), a people who may be afflicted, perplexed, persecuted, or struck down. Fragile pieces of clay that are dropped and shattered. Like the Japanese practice of Kintsugi, God takes broken pieces of our lives and rebirths them it into a new beginning.
Elijah’s New Beginning
In the Old Testament, we meet a man who walked this path. Elijah was a prophet in the Northern Kingdom of Israel. Strong, bold, faithful are all words that describe Elijah. But he was also an ordinary man (James 5:17). An ordinary man who was in the middle of one of the most improbable revivals in the history of Israel, yet, in the days to follow, he arrived at a place of total exhaustion. Elijah was emotionally, physically, and spiritually spent to the degree that he declared to God, “It is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life, for I am no better than my fathers” (1 Kings 19:4). Even the angel of the Lord who appeared to Elijah acknowledged, “the journey is too great for you” (1 Kings 19:7).
Elijah needed a new beginning. He was done. He had nothing left in the tank. Nothing else to give. Nothing left to say.
God provided a new beginning, not in spite of Elijah’s brokenness but through his brokenness.
“God provided a new beginning, not in spite of Elijah’s brokenness but through his brokenness. ”
“And he arose and ate and drank, and went in the strength of that food forty days and forty nights” (1 Kings 19:8). From drained to a new journey, God mended Elijah’s brokenness and formed a beautiful new beginning.
Naomi and Ruth’s New Beginning
Then there’s Naomi and Ruth. Over a thousand years before Jesus’s birth, a man named Elimelech and his wife Naomi moved from Bethlehem to Moab. Their move was in response to a famine that had struck Judah.
I’m sure Elimelech and Naomi hoped Moab would be the new beginning they had dreamed of, but sadly the next ten years would be a mixture of tragedy and joy. While in Moab, Elimelech dies, and now Naomi finds herself a widow caring for her two sons. Yet in the midst of her sorrow, Naomi experiences joy as her sons both marry Moabite women. But her joy once again turns to sorrow as both of her sons die. The unimaginable happens, not only has Naomi celebrated two weddings, now she has mourned during three funerals. All taking place in a span of a decade.
Now, Naomi has a decision to make: stay in this foreign land or move back home. Facing this brokenness, Naomi elects to go back to Bethlehem, and surprisingly one of her daughters-in-law, Ruth, joins her. Both Naomi and Ruth needed a new beginning after a decade of tragedy. They were hurt. They were bitter. They were broken.
God provided a new beginning, not in spite of Naomi and Ruth’s brokenness but through their brokenness. God’s provision for these two widows comes through a man named Boaz. He was a faithful man who supplies food for them through his field (Ruth 2) and later becomes a kinsman redeemer for Ruth.
The New Beginning of the Gospel
At the heart of the Gospel of Jesus Christ is a new beginning. Think back to your salvation, no matter if you were a young child or old in age when you turned to Jesus. The moment Christ entered your life, a new beginning arose!
We needed a new beginning. We knew that we needed a new self. We were tired of our old one. We were lost. We were done with the worthless things of this world. And God, by his grace, provided a new beginning, not in spite of our brokenness but through the brokenness.
Through the gospel, newness generously flows as the triune God regenerates us to internal newness, justifies us to external newness, sanctifies us to increasing newness, and will glorify us to eternal newness. Christ makes us new.
From Brokenness Comes God’s Provision
Elijah, Naomi and Ruth, and the gospel show us that from brokenness comes God’s provision. Let’s be clear: the brokenness must not be brushed under the rug and ignored, but instead the brokenness should point to the beauty of God’s provision of new beginnings.
Brokenness comes in a multitude of different forms. Elijah’s brokenness came from exhaustion. Naomi and Ruth’s brokenness came from tragedy. And our brokenness apart from Jesus comes from our sinful nature.
No matter the cause of your brokenness, may you long for God to take the broken pieces of 2020 and mend together a beautiful, new beginning.
Danny Loeffelholz lives in Tyler, Texas with his wife Kara and their three sons. He has a PhD. in expository preaching and pulpit communication from Trinity Theological Seminary. Danny is a pastor at Grace Community Church (Tyler, TX), and previously served on staffs at Pine Cove Camps (Tyler, TX) and Grace Community Church (Bartlesville, OK). You can follow him on Facebook and Twitter.