The NEW Millennium, 2000, gave mankind such hope.  It suggested a transformation of the world.

What a joyful day we spent last New Year’s Eve, watching the new millennium unfold like a delicate rose across the planet, one time zone after another.

Newscasters, cameras and ceremonies around the globe all synchronized to show us the magic of midnight revelry in Spain, Germany, and Brazil

We called our daughter in Madrid, Spain, “Happy New Year!”  With phone in hand, and our television popping fireworks, we exclaimed, “We see you!  It’s midnight in Madrid, and we see the fireworks.  It’s beautiful!”

It was beautiful, January 1, 2000.  Instead of  the long-anticipated worldwide calamity, God seemed to show us, in one long-lived day, what humanity is capable of at its best.

What I wouldn’t give for January 1, 2001, to ring in the same beauty.  But once again, we humans are focused on the wrong thing. In the year 2001, there is that untidy little digit, the “one.”  It gives an edge, a point to the rounded thousand.  What is there to celebrate, we ask, when 2001 is just another year?

Eventually, truth sinks in.  We will add digit upon digit, one year at a time, a collection of years without worldwide significance.

Uninspiring numbers 2016, 2256, 2891.  One thousand of them, marching on endlessly, centuries filled with insignificant years.  Each year will melt into the next, one after one after one,…a thousand times before mankind again feels a compelling desire to reflect on his place in the world, of man’s effect on mankind.

We should have learned a millennium-sized lesson on January 1, 2000.  For that one hopeful day in the life of  planet earth, we focused on the beauty of a new sunrise and our fellow man with whom we share such beauty.  Sadly, a sunrise lasts only minutes.  Reassured that impending disasters and world destruction were no longer possible, life quickly returned to normal.

The mid-east is a land divided where people come both to worship and to kill.  In the United States of America, we sought to perfect ways of counting ballots to grab an election.  The ozone layer continues to recede.  Deforesting moves at an ever expanding pace.  And we still bury number six plastic in Arizona landfills because recycling is not a priority.

The New Millennium has become just another millennium.  Worn-out and over-rated.  Is it little wonder?  We wanted to change the world without realizing the need to change the human heart.

World change is in the little things.  Each day is renewal, even though we approach it as the same old thing.  We want to see change in the big things.  We want to bring the environment back in order, feed every starving person, and bring world peace.  Our eyes are on the big things.

Environment.  Recycling.  These are in the little thing: the Styrofoam cup.  Taking a stand for the environment is easy.  Trying to get a cup of coffee to go without using one more Styrofoam cup isn’t.

World Peace.  Ban the bomb.  But, looking at my own family, how many feuds and bitter words are responsible for people refusing to talk with each other?  How easy to write a letter, make a phone call, meet for coffee.  How easy to listen to each other, to extend compassion, to admit our own offenses.

Mother Teresa said world peace begins at home.  Nearly everything else begins at home, too.  In the little things.

We wanted to pack all of our human hope into one year, 2000.  We wanted it to bring a New Millennium.  But do we want the new millennium to grow out of old habits?  We must remember that a millennium comes to us one decade, one year, one week, one minute at a time.  We are each individually responsible for a lifetime of decisions.  We want big change.  But do we want to take little steps?

The coming year is no less important than the year 2000.

Preparing for 2001, we must exhort one another anew.  Each day we are given a chance to make perfection, to bind up wounds, to give rather than to receive.  The words of Jesus are no less true today than when He spoke them, “For out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks.  The good man brings good things out of the good stored up in him, and the evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in him.”  [Mat 12:34-35, NIV]

If we truly paid attention on January 1, 2000, we caught a glimpse of what we could make of this world.  We saw the reality of bringing good things out of the good stored up in us.

And that hopeful vision alone should turn our hearts to the tremendous possibilities ahead in a new year…a new day—in each new minute in time.