New Hope

To me, this verse means time is nothing to God. He exists in our past, present, future, and beyond the confines of time itself. Yet, here we are at the cusp of a new year, according to the Gregorian calendar. Not so for most calendar types, and there are hundreds of calendar types throughout the world with variants of each one going back into ancient history. They tell dates with different methods, including solar, lunar, lunisolar, and fixed length. Oh, but it's 2016? Yeah, that depends:

Gregorian calendar 2016
MMXVI
Ab urbe condita 2769
Armenian calendar 1465
ԹՎ ՌՆԿԵ
Assyrian calendar 6766
Bahá'í calendar 172–173
Bengali calendar 1423
Berber calendar 2966
British Regnal year 64 Eliz. 2 – 65 Eliz. 2
Buddhist calendar 2560
Burmese calendar 1378
Byzantine calendar 7524–7525
Chinese calendar 乙未年 (Wood Goat)
4712 or 4652
— to —
丙申年 (Fire Monkey)
4713 or 4653
Coptic calendar 1732–1733
Discordian calendar 3182
Ethiopian calendar 2008–2009
Hebrew calendar 5776–5777
Hindu calendars
- Vikram Samvat 2072–2073
- Shaka Samvat 1937–1938
- Kali Yuga 5116–5117
Holocene calendar 12016
Igbo calendar 1016–1017
Iranian calendar 1394–1395
Islamic calendar 1437–1438
Japanese calendar Heisei 28
(平成２８年)
Javanese calendar 1949–1950
Juche calendar 105
Julian calendar Gregorian minus 13 days
Korean calendar 4349
Minguo calendar ROC 105
民國105年
Nanakshahi calendar 548
Thai solar calendar 2559
Unix time
1451606400 – 1483228799

My personal favorite is the year of the Wood Goat.

So, if time doesn't matter, then what's the point of celebrating an arbitrary day?

Hope.

Humanity yearns for renewal of hope, to clean the slate, and to move onward to greater things than before. Yet, again and again, God tells us in his Book that every moment is a new beginning:

Lamentations 3:22-23 “The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness”

Isaiah 43:19 "Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert."

2 Corinthians 5:17 "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come:The old has gone, the new is here!"

2016 hasn't been the easiest year for most of us, and many are looking ahead to 2017 with hope that the world and life will be better. It all begins with you.

So, this year, if you "fail" your New Year's resolution, remember this moment (and this one, aaaand this one too) is a good time to begin again - and celebrate the new beginnings God gives you every day.