The dawn of a new year offers an opportunity for a fresh start but also engenders some anxiety about changes to come. New year’s resolutions commit to a new and better path. For those for whom 2024 was a difficult year, the new year raises hope that 2025 will be better. For those who are anticipating changes – the birth of a baby, a marriage, a new job, retirement – a new year’s dawn can spur great hopes and expectations mixed with a dose of fears of the unknown. In a year of presidential transition in our nation, the new year offers hope-filled possibilities for those who embrace the new president and his brand of politics, and anxiety for those who view his erratic behavior and spiteful rhetoric as ominous signs for our nation and world. Across the years, the one constant in new years is change which demands of us creative and resilient solutions to new problems and opportunities. What are your hopes and expectations for this new year? Are you optimistic, pessimistic, or apathetic? Do you take the opportunity to embrace the new year as a time to reboot your life and way of living, or are you desperately trying to hang on to the old through whatever changes may come? Within the pages of Scripture, the prophets speak of new things that God is doing. Those new things are intended to encourage the people to embrace new possibilities, to reassure them of God’s presence with them, and to offer hope in God’s hand at work in their lives. As you look to this new year – however you look at it – I encourage you to look for the new things that God is doing in our midst. Some of them may involve you, and some of them may be far from you. You may find some of them in news reports or in daily encounters or in quiet “aha” moments or in new opportunities. Look for the hand of God at work in the world and in your life, and make yourself available as an instrument for God to do whatever it is God is doing. For amid all the change, God is constant – constantly present, constantly loving, constantly urging us to trust God’s promises and so to live with less anxiety and fear, with more hope and courage and peace – come what may! In 2025, dare to embrace the words of the prophet Jeremiah: Surely I know the plans I have for you, says the LORD, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope. (Jer.29:11) In that promise, may you find hope and peace in this new year!
— John Peterson
