Today is the day when we’re supposed to make New Year’s Resolutions. But more often than not, these don’t work out. We try to will ourselves into new habits and new ways of living. Hopefully this comes from reflecting on the year and wanting to make things better. As Christians, though, we believe in transformation and not just willful habit change. We believe in the grace-filled power of God, while recognizing our own depravity and inability to simply will ourselves into righteousness. This only comes in Jesus Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit.
This is what we are supposed to be reflecting on during the time of Advent, but it can easily become subsumed in the business and consumerism of the season, and even the forced joy of Christmas itself.
But our passage today speaks into the fullness of the human experience, and how God enters into that experience. “In all their distress he too was distressed.” God in His mercy lifts and carries His people, treating them “compassionately and with deep affection.” Is a memory of the blessings God has brought in the past.
But this passage comes in the midst of a song of lament, possibly sung by the exiles in the midst of the ruins of the temple. Sadness and lament is entirely appropriate because it is an honest recounting of what has happened. God has been good in the past and continues to be good today, but let us not ignore the trauma and tragedy that nonetheless is real. He seeks honest worship.
We can’t force ourselves into this, but God will bring it to us, just as He has in the past both on a cosmic scale and on a personal one. God is good, all the time.
— Sermon Notes, Dave Sim, Renew Church, Lynnwood WA, January 1, 2023