The beginning of another new year invites contemplative souls to set goals, aspire to new heights, and dream new dreams.  It is the chance for a fresh start and a new beginning.  But for many, another new year compounds fears and dread of both real and imagined disaster.  The world is often a terrifying place not welcoming to the timid, the sensitive, or the fearful at heart. 

In one of the climactic scenes of The Lord of the Rings, the young hobbit, Frodo, laments the world he sees around him with all its tragedy and darkness.  Looking at the difficulty in continuing on the mission before him, Frodo makes a plaintive request, "I wish it need not have happened in my time."  Gandalf the Grey, ever his wise mentor, consoles him with these words: "So do all who live to see such times, but that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.  There are other forces at work in this world, Frodo, besides the will of evil.  Bilbo was meant to find the Ring, in which case you were also meant to have it.  And that is an encouraging thought."(1)

All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.  It is fairly safe to say that in entering a new year there will indeed be crises of one sort or another.  These crises might make even the strongest among us pine for another time from some yesteryear gone by or make us wish our journey would be a different and a far more pleasant trip.  

While our longing for something more, something different, and something better speaks to us of what should be, we often allow our longings to lead us beyond our present moment.  We make ourselves impotent to the possibility of decision to make the best of the time that is given to us.  Mired in wishful thinking, we fail to act here and now with resolute mission in the times we have been given.

When Jesus prayed what would be one of his last prayers prior to his crucifixion, he prayed for his disciples as he knew he would leave them to a task far greater and more difficult than they could possibly imagine.  Did he pray that God would rescue them from the times they would face?  Peter and others in this fellowship would soon be martyred as a result of their mission.  Yet, Jesus doesn't pray that they would be saved from the world in which they were living.  Jesus prayed, "I do not ask you to take them out of the world, but to keep them from evil.... As you did send me into the world, I also have sent them into the world" (John 17:15-18). 

Jesus, sent into the world by God, now sends his followers to bear witness to the faith, hope, and love found in the kingdom Jesus inaugurated in his life and ministry.  Jesus encouraged those who would follow him to find their peace and security in him.  "These things I have spoken to you, that in me you may have peace.  In the world you have tribulation, but take courage; I have overcome the world" (John 16:33).  On the other hand, Jesus empowered his disciples by calling them to mission—to witness to him in the world, regardless of the tribulation they would find there.  He called them to purposeful action in their world of "here and now," and sent them into their world to share the good news regardless of the times they had been given.

Like Frodo and the other members of the Fellowship of the Ring, we can so easily look around us and see the peril of the journey in this world.  Our desire to avoid difficulty and pain, and our longing for another kind of world, to borrow the words of a familiar phrase, often make us so heavenly minded that we are no earthly good.  Yet, our longings for what is good, beautiful, and right for our world do not have to lead us to escapism or flights of fantasy.  Rather, as another new year begins, our longing for a better world can compel us as resolute witnesses tothe gospel as the force of good for our world.  Indeed, our longings can lead us to decide what we can do to make the best of the times we have been given.

Margaret Manning is a member of the speaking and writing team at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Seattle, Washington.

(1) From The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, based on J.R.R. Tolkein's books by the same title, directed by Peter Jackson.