Dear Beloved,

New Year’s blessings to you! I deeply appreciate Advent and Epiphany. In between comes the calendar new year. I appreciate the calendar new year as well. It reminds me of fresh starts and causes me to pause in gratitude for the blessings and lessons of a year coming to a close and to set reflective intentions for the year ahead. As I think about my hopes and dreams, I have so many which causes me to feel the humbleness that returns me to my knees. God, teach me to pray. Jesus, show me your way. Spirit, guide and direct me.

I thank God for you as individuals and as a collective. Praises be to God for God’s design for relational living and community. Friends, what are your hopes and dreams for the new year? Which spiritual practices will nourish and support you? Your faith community is here to journey with you. May Jesus’ ways of compassion and mercy offer you hope in this new year. We hope you will connect through virtual or in person worship and we invite you to engage through a ministry team. Each of us have gifts, strengths, experiences, wounds, character traits, and a God-given uniqueness that is needed in the world. We are better together. Together empowered by God’s Spirit we can dream God’s dreams and join in God’s call that all may live in deep shalom.

May we continue to be open to and reflect the hope, love, joy, and peace of Jesus in this new year of 2022

With gratitude for you, Sarah

17 So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! 18 All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; 19 that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself,[d] not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us.

2 Corinthians 5:17-19