What's On Your Calendar?

Well, what do you know? We have a new thing going on here today. This is Dick Boath with stories from the road. Let's get after it. Well, here I am, and there you are. It is podcast number one, 2026, we're in New Year's Week. You know, when I was a kid growing up in Oakland, California back in the 50s, sometimes when our family would be together in a devotional, I always like the Psalms where they had that word sea law because it sounded or say law. It sounded like a foreign language. And what do you know? I grew up and found out it wasn't it. And it essentially says change, take a pause, take a deep breath. Later in my years at Frick Jr. High when I went to Latin class there in East Oakland, again, I stumbled over, I was taking a foreign language, I stumbled over the phrase Anodomini, which means the year of our Lord. Because that's how our particular calendar is dated, the Gregorian calendar we call it. But both phrases, say law and Anodomini, say life is a rhythm. It has a natural pace. It needs a pace. In that vein, another word pops up, calendar. A calendar is that spreadsheet of life that reflects time, sometimes even time and meaning, somewhere along the way. In business and industry and even family life, I have come to make this observation. If the action we are talking about doesn't have a calendar date and a dollar connected to it, it's probably not real. Let me say that again, if the action we are taking doesn't have a calendar date and a dollar connected to it, it's probably not real. Whether it's reflected by birth dates or anniversaries or baptisms or jobs starting or ending, that's the heart of it. So welcome to 2026, friends. Let me talk just a moment about the history of calendars. The calendars commonly serve both cultural and practical purposes and often as I've read, they're connected to astronomy and agriculture. The natural units for timekeeping are used by most historical societies are the day, the solar year, and sometimes the lunar year, the moon. Calendars, I'm reading this, are explicit schemes used for timekeeping. Interestingly enough, and I just bring this up because this is where I start. In Genesis 114 through 19, this is what's happening. God establishes lights in the sky, sun, moon stars, and on the fourth day to serve as markers for signs, seasons, days, and years. These celestial bodies regulate time, separating day from night and signify appointed times. So there's a Hebrew word, Moa the In, which means that includes sacred festivals, agricultural cycles, and the natural rhythm of the year. So let me just read this. Genesis the first chapter, verses 14 through 19, and God said, let there be lights in the vault of the sky to separate the day from the night, let them serve as signs to mark sacred times and days and years, and let them be lights in the vault of the sky to give light on the earth. And it was so. God made two great lights, the greater light to govern the day, the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars. God set them in the vault of the sky to give light on the earth, to govern the day in the night, and to separate light from darkness. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening, and there was morning, the fourth day. To the purpose of the lights, the sun, moon, and stars was to create and govern the day and the night, and to mark time. And by marking time, we provide structure and order and a rhythm of life. And the idea of seasons coming back to that Hebrew word moating, it refers to specific times, not just weather changes, but other kinds of occasions, such as religious feasts. When you read the Old Testament in particular, you see the life of that community, the larger Israelite community, centering around feast days. And then the context of time, to simply the fourth day, describes the creation of the calendar, allowing for the distinction between days and years and seasons. This idea that this text shows that God is the creator of time, creating a system for tracking seasons. This whole idea of creation in the Old Testament, what we call the Old Testament of the Hebrew writings. And the new creation, where it's talking about an individual being created now, causes me to think about, what do they have in common? What's in common? Well, in both cases, life, this creation brings new life, it's done centered around light, whether that's revelation or the whole electromagnetic spectrum that takes you on the one end from Dr. Phil in communications like television to gamma knife brain surgery on the other end of the spectrum with everything in between all kinds of visible light, all kinds of invisible light to the to the naked eye. So creation and new creation have this in common. Life and light and order brought out of chaos. We've already read part of Genesis 1, in the beginning God created. Here's first Corinthians. This is Paul, the apostle, years later, thousands of years later, saying this, therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away and the new has come. And as you read the Gospels and read other parts of the New Testament, you see that over and over and over again. That new things happen. That in the coming of Christ, all things are made new. That's both a hope and a promise. So with that little monologue, that's where we're starting podcast number one, 2026, thinking about new creation, new life, order out of chaos, the hope and promise. I'm just tossing ideas out here for us to reflect on as we go forward. Welcome to 2026. God bless, catch you later. This is Dick Foth with stories from the road. Bye-bye.