I have an announcement to make: I’m a Dad! Well, for the second time. But honestly, already having one child does not make the birth of the second any less exciting! Our daughter was born January 30th, 2017 at 9:31pm. The evening and the night flew by, and before we knew it we had packed our bags and were ready to head home to introduce our baby girl to our two year old son. We just had to make one stop on the way home: the children’s clothing store, Once Upon a Child! Our first child was a boy, and we didn’t know we were having a girl, so we were a little unprepared in terms of pink and purple coloured baby clothes. Nearly everyone we passed in the kids clothing store gave a typical, “Aww,” or a “she’s so cute!” When cashing out, the cashier asked us, “how old is she?”

It took us a moment to think… “uhhh, a day!”

            “One day old?”

“Yup, she was just born last night!”

The cashier didn’t say anything else, but I knew what she was thinking… now THAT’S a new baby! There’s perhaps nothing like a newborn baby that gives us that sense of newness. They’re so small; so dependent on Mom and Dad for survival; so innocent; and they have that “new baby smell too” (you know, like that new car smell!). There is nothing that could compare with the feeling of holding a newborn baby. With it, there comes this overwhelming and amazing realization that new life has come into the earth! Someone who, just 9 months ago—give or take—did not exist, is not here, in my arms, breathing the same oxygen as me. It’s a powerful experience! But why is it so powerful? Because that baby is a new creation. A little human being who has never experienced life before, and will now grow and learn and develop into a completely unique human being with his or her own set of finger prints and personality and purpose in life. We all like new things. We all like new babies (even those of you who don’t want your own!). We like them because they are an expression of something we all want to experience in our own lives. We all want to be new—again. We’ve all done things we’ve regretted; said things we wished we hadn’t said; made decisions that took us down a road we now know wasn’t best. And if we could, we’d want to be made new, again. As new as a newborn baby.

Here’s the good news: you can! Being made new is not a matter of building a time-machine or being reincarnated. It’s not a matter of doing our best to stay young at heart or look young physically. It’s a matter of knowing WHO you are and WHOSE you are. God has created each and every one of us with the capacity to be made a new creation. To get a fresh start. To start life, in a sense, all over again. A man by the name of Paul made this statement when writing a letter to some friends a couple thousand years ago: “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come” (2 Corinthians 5:17).

Are you ready for some old things to pass away in your life? Are you ready for something new to come? Are you ready to be made a new creation? God is ready. The only question is: are you?


By Pastor Tim Klassen