My Hope For You In 2025

 The hubbub of the holiday season has passed and we find ourselves in that eerily-calm in between of Christmas and New Year's Day. We're all pausing to reflect on the ups and downs of 2024 and the possibilities of the year to come. We're still catching up with family and friends who are in town or on break, enjoying some college football bowl games while we're at it. We're anticipating what blessings or trials may be in store for us up ahead, setting our fresh goals and hopes, and feeling a bit like we've got one foot still in this year and another foot already in the next. We're trying to keep our minds here in 2024 still but let's face it: they've already jumped into 2025 in a way.   

As I'm sitting here in my cozy Alaskan home, watching the birds and the resident squirrel outside and the beautiful whiteness that is wintertime where I live, I'm praying and thinking over what I not only wish for myself in the new year but also what I hope and want for you - my precious readers. I don't know all of your life-stories or the dreams you may be taking with you into 2025. I don't know what baggage you may be hoping to unload, what endings you may be asked to take, what perspectives shifts you wish to make. But there are a few things God seems to be pressing on my heart that encompass it all and I trust will perhaps be guiding points or moments of comfort for you in the times you need them most... 

May you discover (or find again) the healing you so desperately need. Whatever you've been putting off facing or changing or making peace with, may you find the courage in this new year to finally take that brave, bold step of getting the help that leads you toward mending. Whatever people or places or resources or experiences are necessary in order for you to arrive at this, may God send them your way and may you notice them when they show up. 

May you have more than just a relationship or knowledge of the Creator who made and loves you. May you actually have a encounter with Him in the deepest spaces of your soul that help you see this isn't just a pipe dream we call faith but a moving, shaking, living, breathing God who invites you to participate in His master-plan of redemption. As you journey with Him, may you realize that He wants to gently invade every part of your being and your story, undoing all the lies and the negative stories and the hurts and the wounds and instead, give you the realest life you've always wanted and the love you never had. 

May you be willing to set aside your pride and enter into new places of possibility, stepping outside of your pre-conceived ideas, your internal boxes, your opinions, your long-held beliefs. May you be strong yet weak enough to see that sometimes there's another way to do life that could open doors to beautiful things you'd otherwise miss, and may you notice the places where you've set limitations on yourself, others, or God instead of walking in the freedom that is available to you. 

May you also be daring enough to follow through on the promises and the commitments you've made to yourself, God, and those around you. Many say the right words but few actually live them out. May you be among those who mean what they say, say what they mean, and don't set expectations for yourself or others that you are unable to keep.

May you renew (or maybe begin anew) friendships with those who speak life into you, challenge you, remind you who you really are or want to become, show up for you when you need it most, listen to you, hold your pain gently, and overall be the living embodiment of the Jesus they profess to know and love. May the community you've perhaps been looking for all your life begin to form itself around you as you try your best to be to others what you hope they will and can be for you. 

Lastly, may you also learn the art of celebration and appreciation. All of life is a gift, and you've only got one shot at it to fully embrace and value and sit with and take in all the ways in which the Maker showcases His love for this world. May you find ways to celebrate the people around you, the life you have, the created beauty, and countless other things rather than always looking for everything and everyone to simply have a useful benefit that merely helps you reach your individualist goals. Instead, may you appreciate people and things as they are for what they are, finding deep value and meaning in them as reflections of the Divine. There is much goodness to be noticed, if you'll turn around and intentionally see it. 

These things and more I pray over you and wish for you to feel and know in the year to come. And I truly believe you will see some of these come to life in your story as you continue to move your way along in the journey to Grace. As you open more to grace, you will open more to life which will in time, open you more to God. And God will meet you where you're at, as He always does, happy to love you fully and freely while also not content to have you stay where you've been. 

Here's to 2025 and whatever is in store for us. May we walk into it with renewed hope and the realization that God will never leave us or forsake us. As He promised, Emmanuel will be with us through it all and love us through it all, giving us that place of safety and goodness to fall into time and time again no matter what bitter or sweet things we may be asked to endure.