A New Creation
“So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!” 2 Corinthians 5:17
A New Creation
When I read this verse in Sunday school many years ago, it was translated differently. It read, Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature. Two changes are significant. One is the more inclusive “anyone” instead of “man.” The other marks a shift in perspective. Rather than “he is a new creature,” we are told emphatically, “there is a new creation.” This is inclusivity writ large. We no longer look at the person as the new creature; we look at the whole world as the new creation.
I am reminded of this truth whenever I look at the first oil painting I bought. I was a young pastor fresh out of 
seminary. I had little money. On a trip to Washington, D.C., I stopped at the Torpedo Factory, a munitions manufacturing site that had been converted to artist studios and galleries. Talk about pounding swords into plowshares! There, I saw a painting by Ann Fursman Nix that I loved.
I looked at it often on return visits but could not justify spending several mortgage payments on a piece of art. On one visit, I met Ann’s husband. He told me that the way to determine if a major art purchase made sense was to sit and look at the artwork for an hour. If the art still spoke to me, it was a good buy. So I sat, I looked, and I bought.
As he wrapped the painting, he asked me if I knew Gerard Manley Hopkins. I told him that he was one of my favorite poets. He then told me that my new painting bore the title, “Bright Wings.” That phrase came from one of the few pieces of poetry that I had committed to memory and I recited it on the spot.
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs—
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.
In other words, if times turn dark and the lights go out, everything changes when God is at work. The old passes away. Morning eastward springs because God broods over the bent world with warm breast and bright wings. There is a new creation. So we pray, “Guide us, O God, into the new creation of each day, where we can meet and know you and one another anew.”
Bruce Yoder is Vice President for Philanthropy at the YMCA of Greater Richmond. He can be reached at yoderb@ymcarichmond.org and on his profile page here.
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