You Are the New Day

The community choir I sing with has started practicing repertoire for a February concert. One of the pieces on the program is "You Are the New Day". This song is a bit of a choir standard in the United States, and although I had heard it performed, I'd never sung it myself. I don't know that I had really stopped to listen to the lyrics before, but right now they speak to me:

(1) I will love you more than me

and more than yesterday

If you can but prove to me

you are the new day

(2) Send the sun in time for dawn

Let the birds all hail the morning

Love of life will urge me say

you are the new day

(3) When I lay me down at night

knowing we must pay

Thoughts occur that this night 

might stay yesterday

(4) Thoughts that we as humans small

could slow worlds and end it all

lie around me where they fall

before the new day

(5) One more day when time is running out

for everyone

Like a breath I knew would come 

I reach for the new day

(6) Hope is my philosophy

Just needs days in which to be

Love of life means hope for me

borne on a new day 

You are the new day

I don't know who wrote this song or the circumstances of its creation. I have no idea whether or not the author was Christian or whether he meant this song to be about faith, hope, or simply gentle optimism. 

To me, it is a song of encouragement that I sing to God, to remind myself of how much I trust Him to put things right. He is the new day, the one who gives me fresh beginnings and heals my broken spirit. Each stanza of this song has something positive to say to me about my relationship with God:

1. I do love God more than I love myself because He is more than I could ever be on my own. He is the author of all my days.
2. God gives me this beautiful world where morning never fails to come. I see all the wonderful things He has made, and that makes me love Him more.
3. I stain each day with sin, but God's grace washes away my transgressions and leaves them in my past, making each new day fresh and new for me.
4. No matter what a horrible mess we humans make of everything, God will put it right. Though we destroy this entire Earth with our sin, there will still be a new day when God creates a new Earth, free from evil.
5. Just when I think I can't make it, God renews my strength. Just when I think that everything is falling apart, God rebuilds my life out of the ashes. When I die and the darkness closes in, God will usher me into a brand new life. There will ALWAYS be a new day, thanks to God.
6. How can despair hold me when I have so many new days to look forward to? God's grace is such a beautiful gift, and hope is its natural byproduct. No matter how dark things may seem, God's goodness and the promise of his mercy overcomes it all. 

The new day is coming. God, my beloved Father, Savior, and Guide is the new day.