If you have been paying attention to social media (or the media as a whole), you would likely conclude that we can make all the consternations of 2020 go away with a simple turn of a calendar page. Their message seems to be : “2021 is here! We have a new year. All the tough stuff is over…” or so the story goes.

Can it be that simple? Can the turning of a calendar page make that kind of impact? 

A word about calendars…apparently, they began back in the Bronze Age and we have uncovered a bunch of them around Samaria, Egypt and Assyria. These ancient calendars made an attempt to keep track of the movements of the sun and moon.

In 45 BC, Julius Caesar reformed the Roman calendar and by introducing  a leap day every four years, freed that calendar from being dependent on lunar calculations. 1500 years later, the Gregorian calendar refined the Julian version with such precision, it is still in worldwide use.

So, as you glance at the calendar on your phone or your watch or your refrigerator door, what are your thoughts? Can “turning the page” fix everything? Doubtful. But maybe what we need is a new kind of calendar.

I am suggesting a calendar that has three pages: Page One-The beginning, Page Two-The middle and Page Three-The end. And as I think about those three pages, I am remembering a line out of the movie, “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.” In the film, the young entrepreneur declares, “Everything will be alright in the end. If it is not alright, then it is not the end.”

You and I are on Page Two of my new calendar. We are in The Middle. And things are not all right. We are not quite yet at The End.

Turning the page in a Gregorian calendar won’t fix everything. But take a look at Page Three of my new calendar. It has some writing on the top of the page, right out of Revelation 21. 

“Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away ….And I heard  a loud voice from the throne saying ‘Now the dwelling of God is with men and He will live with them. They will be His people and God Himself will be with them…’”

I like my new calendar. I think we can all wait with a degree of patience as we sit on Page Two, because pretty soon things will be alright. The Lord is coming again. Take a moment to read I Thessalonians 4 and Revelation 21. Consider how God is winding things towards an end He controls. 

The Lord will turn the page soon. Let’s comfort one another with these words.