New Every Year
Can you even believe it’s 2025?!!
If you are like the rest of humanity, you are feeling the necessity or pressure or maybe even the leading to evaluate your life and get some things in order this year. Everyone’s epic New Year’s Resolutions sound awesome, but how do we see the change we hope for become a reality?
I love that Scripture reminds us that God’s mercies are new every morning. Wouldn’t it also be true that His mercies are new every year? I don’t know what you need mercy for, but I do know this: We have a merciful God who gives second and third and 100th chances. So this year as you lean into making some changes, doing some things differently, remember that God is a God of new starts. In fact, when we see Him colliding with people in the New Testament, He is always passing out new starts as though they never run out.
I had lunch recently to celebrate a woman’s hard-fought sobriety. When I first met her a few years ago, she had just tried committing suicide. I remember looking at the rope burns on her neck and wondering how Collide could possibly help her want to live. I listened as she described her painful struggle with drugs and alcohol and I agonized as she explained with certainty that God wanted nothing to do with her. A few weeks ago I got to celebrate with her that she is ALIVE, she is CLEAN and she has opened her life up to the LOVE of Jesus! She smiled proudly and handed me one of her AA coins. One side of its face read “The greatest possession we have is the 24 hours directly in front of us.”
I looked at that coin and was struck. If only we could all live in 24-hour segments of time. We could bite off what we could actually chew. We could be gracious to ourselves. We could be more realistic in our goal setting. We could be cognizant that we are only human and we each only have 24 hours in a day. We could take one small yet important step at a time. And before we know it, we would experience the change we longed to see. It certainly is true that this woman got here one day at a time and everything good and healthy and amazing only becomes our reality by choosing it day after day after day.
Maybe this is why God reminds us that His mercies are new every morning- because He knows we need to take our goals, and hopes and dreams one day at a time. So friend, let’s learn from the woman I celebrated with- the “new” we want to usher in this year will only become a reality ONE DAY at a time. What can you do today that gets you closer to where you want to be tomorrow?
May the Lord who gives us a new start run right into you today, and tomorrow, and the next day. May you feel the guiding of His hand as He extends His mercy and newness right into your dreams,
