Here we are in 2025. Are you as surprised as I am? And truthfully, are you afraid of what’s coming our way in this next year? The dawning of a new year used to bring hope. Determination to do better. Plans to make it our best year yet. But ever since Covid-19 upended the world, it seems we cross each year’s threshold with more trepidation than optimism. With more dread than excitement.

Covid taught us that we can’t know what’s coming, or control it. We may look at the broken, violent world we inhabit and convince ourselves that only bad things lie in wait. So we enter 2025 hesitantly, guarding our souls against its painful possibilities.

This frame of mind is neither healthy nor helpful. While trouble may indeed overtake us, it isn’t guaranteed. For as many dire possibilities that we can name, there are the same number of unconsidered joys.

This year, the prodigal might come home at last. How many days, weeks, or years have you been desperately praying for them to return? This might be the year you glimpse them coming over the hill.

This might be the year you meet someone who will change your life in beautiful and profound ways. It may be your future spouse, or a child. It may be that person who takes the seat beside you at Bible study. They are strangers to you now. But this time next year you may be thanking God for their presence in your life.

This could be the year the cancer goes into remission; where illness loosens its grip on you or someone you love.

Finally and inescapably, this year brings us closer to heaven than we’ve ever been. This may be the year when the trumpet sounds, signaling the end of our tears and struggles.

Too often we live waiting for the other shoe to drop instead of looking for unexpected blessings. As you make your resolutions and plans for the new year, consider taking on the mantle of hope. Take up courage. Determine to find the reasons for joy that will surely come— sometimes obviously, and other times cloaked in trouble. But come they will, if we are determined to welcome them.

The world is drowning in bad news today. But we—you and I—are ambassadors, carrying good news. The best news! For our hope isn’t based on mere optimism. No, it rests on the solid truth of God’s intervention in our darkness. We are not cheap salesmen with empty promises, but messengers with real hope to offer.

No matter what this next year brings, let’s remember that living right here and right now is a privilege and a calling. No matter what comes, let’s determine not to fear it, run from it, or deny its existence, but instead to meet it with courage and, especially, with love.

After all, you never know what miracles may be waiting just around the corner.

Why, my soul, are you downcast? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God.

Psalms 42:11