2025 has arrived! The new year, filled with new possibilities, new hope has arrived! We can bid 2024 a not so fond farewell.
As we start this new year, St. Paul gives us specific directions for living each day. In his letter to the Philippians he says, “Forgetting what lies behind, I strain forward to what is ahead.”
If you have ever been to a circus, you’ve no doubt seen the huge bull elephants chained to a peg in the ground. Perhaps it has occurred to you that the elephant could easily pull the peg out of the ground and escape. However, he does not try. As a baby elephant he was tied to a huge stake that he could not pull out of the ground. Weeks of pulling and tugging only wore a trench around the stake, and finally he gave up. Now that he is full-grown, with great strength and the physical ability to pull the peg out of the ground, he remembers only the futility of past efforts and does not even attempt to escape. He is conditioned to failure.
As we begin this New Year, let us make a fresh start and forget the things from the past that may have been holding us back. We do not have to let ourselves be held down by the disappointments, disasters, and difficulties of the past year. We can enter 2025 with hope for brighter days ahead. No, the world didn’t magically change at the stroke of midnight on New Year’s Eve. But our outlook on the world can change as this new year begins. We can choose to pull up the peg of the past that is holding us captive and move forward with freedom.
This Sunday is the second Sunday after Christmas and every year the appointed text for this day is from the first chapter of John’s gospel.
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God; all things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” John 1:1-5 RSV
This is one of my favorite scripture passages. “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.” Jesus Christ, the Babe of Bethlehem, God’s Word made flesh, was there when the world was created. God spoke the Word and created light in the midst of the darkness. And from that moment on there was light for the world to see.
John goes on to tell us that Jesus, the Word, is the “light of all people…the light no darkness can overcome.” What good news for us as we begin a new year in the midst of these dark days of winter. Good news as we start this year with a tragedy in New Orleans. Good news for those times when our personal lives are shadowed with the darkness of personal struggles, challenges at work, difficult relationships, family discord, illness, the death of loved ones. Good news when our world seems dark with political division, war, acts of violence in schools and places of worship, so much heavy news! “Jesus Christ is the Light of the World, the Light no darkness can overcome!”
Into the dark places of our world…the dark places of our lives…the dark places in our hearts & minds…Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh, the Light of the World, comes again this Christmas.
When life seems dark…when times are trying…when you feel discouraged, overwhelmed with the demands of life…look to the light…find hope in the promise that Jesus Christ the Light of the World is with you, to light your way and give you strength.
An old issue of Sunday School Times contains this story: A little boy carrying a lantern walked along a country lane one dark night with his father. The black silence all about frightened him. He said, “Father, this light reaches such a little way, I am afraid.” His father answered, “True, my boy, but if you walk on, the light will shine to the end of your journey.”
As we enter 2025, we need not be pegged down by the past. Jesus Christ, the Light of the World, promises to give us enough light to take the next step. And that is all that we need. We can be sure of one thing—the light will never go out. We can walk into 2025 with renewed hope, knowing that the darkness will not, cannot, overcome the Light that enlightens our lives! Jesus Christ is the Light of the World, the Light no darkness can overcome!
Praying your new year is bright with the light of Christ’s love!
Your sister in Christ,
Linnea Gustafson
Interim Minister at Lutheran Church of the Redeemer & Zion Lutheran Church
The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of The Kewanee Voice.
