Ah, the New Year approaches . . . . what will we do?  A few days ago, I attended a funeral for the father of a friend of mine.  A devout Christian, my friend's father spent his life pursuing his path with God.  He gave himself completely to the work of his church community, and did his best to reflect the ways of Jesus that he felt bubbling out of him each day.  Now, as the New Testament presents and affirms it, Bill (his name) has stepped into a new life, a life more than the life of a new day, new week, new month, or New Year.  It is a life that will never end.  His family grieves (we think of Ecclesiastes 12's observation that, "A person goes to his eternal home while people mourn in the streets"), but his family also rejoices:  he lives still.
     How do we know?  In Christmas, God is born; on Good Friday, he dies.
     And on Easter, God--Jesus--rises again.
     Shortly before I went to the funeral, I read parts of a memoir, All at Sea.  It's one woman's account of how, in a tale reminiscent of how Mary Shelley watched her husband Percy drown in the Bay of Spiza, she one day a few years ago watched helplessly as her husband drowned in an undertow off the shores of Jamaica.  One minute her husband was here, the next he was gone, never to return.  The author, Decca Aitkenhead, told their two boys repeatedly not to think, in any way, that their father would ever live again, that stories about God, Jesus, and resurrection were just that, stories, fairy tales without credible basis.  Mourn, she said, but realize you'll never ever see your father again.
     So here we are, on the verge of the New Year, looking at two very different ways of seeing the world.  One is rooted in a hope in God; the other is rooted in a hope in the world.
     In no way do I wish to impugn Ms. Aitkenhead's beliefs (or lack thereof).  She is fully entitled to hold them.  Yet as I look across the divide between the old year and new, I wonder:  if Jesus rose, why will we not, too?
     Happy New Year!