Dear Beloved,

Are you a resolutions person? A dreamer? A goal setter? A hoper? I know folx who are totally opposed to New Year’s resolutions. I appreciate New Year’s for a variety of reasons. It is a holiday that always invites me to take a little extra time for meditation, contemplation, confession, and the ancient practice of examen. In some ways, all days are holidays (holy days) for me as I understand our Holy God to be with us every day. Yet there are specific days named by particular countries, calendars, traditions, groups, cultures, communities…. that offer space for more intentionality for something. (As I write this, I have a deep desire to pause and research a holiday that I’m not familiar with in order to learn a little more, but that will need to wait until another day as deadlines are coming  

What does New Year’s offer you? Does a change in the numerical year on the calendar invite you to a fresh start? For me, I feel the liturgical words experienced during our corporate worship words of assurance – God makes all this fresh and new!!!! Does the change invite you to make amends for or release something that happened in the closing year that was unloving and unkind? For me, it offers me space to open myself a little bit more, a little bit further to where God is asking me to grow. Does the newness of the year whisper to you or nudge you to try something new? Maybe you want to try to do less. Maybe you want to free yourself from the expectations of social media. Maybe you want to take a new class, be part of a ministry team, try a different spiritual practice. For me, there are always so many new things that I want to try or do, so the new year is a time of being still, quiet, and trying to discern where God is saying move/go/now/yes and where God is saying stay/wait/not now/no. I’d appreciate your prayers as we begin God’s new year of 2023, and you are in mine. If you want to chat about ministry teams or new studies groups which you can connect with as part of Friedens United Church of Christ, please be in touch. I’d be excited and honored to talk and pray with you. I thank God for you and pray you know that you are loved and appreciated. 

From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view; even though we once knew Christ from a human point of view, we know him no longer in that way. So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation;

2 Corinthians 5:16-18