I love new things. I love to new toys, games, tablets, computers, music and everything else in between. I also love new friendships, new people, new ideas, new everything. We all love new things.

The problem we have is, we all love new things so much, after a few months those new things get old. We love the new TV until 3 months later the new TV looks old, we love our new cell phone up until 3 months later when we drop our phone and notice the new ding on the side or crack the screen. We love our new friends and new people in our lives up until they give us a few dings, or really we start to notice the dings they have on them. They don’t look new after a short time.

Today I am thinking about relationships in my life that have been dinged. Those relationships that have seen the screen cracked or marked. Those relationships with my fellow believers in Christ that are broken and bruised. I want them to be new. I want them to go back to the way they were when I got them all new and shiny. The trouble is I am looking at it from the wrong place. You see I am trying, like many of us, to make something new myself. I a broken human being am trying to make this thing this relationship new when the only way it is new is through Christ.

2 Corinthians 5:17-18 says something amazing about our newness.
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; (ESV)

Titus 3:5 also says:
But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, 6 whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior,

These verses talk about how our relationship with God is made new. My relationships can be made new each and every day because I have been made new each and every day, when I remember my old self being drowned in that water of baptism every day. This week I got to see a young person in 3rd grade baptized because he heard in his Lutheran day school about what that water does. How it makes him new in Christ. How in brings to us the forgiveness of sins. He wanted to be made new.

So how about us. I am reminded each and every day of my broken, not so new self and not so new relationships. I also know that each and everyday through Christ’s continually working in me I am made new. Those relationships that are also broken because of all our sin can be made new as well. Christ’s work in me and my fellow believer gives me the greatest hope as I continue to try mend those broken relationship with those around me. May it give you that hope as well.